


Keeps Me Warm, Makes You Smile

by essieincinci



Series: No Finer Mess To Be Found [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Punk, Angst, Anxiety, Belly Kink, Chubby Kink, Chubby Punk Bucky, Drinking, F/F, Feeding Kink, Insecurity, Light Dom/sub, M/M, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Tattoo Artist Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:22:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/essieincinci/pseuds/essieincinci
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At Stark’s New Year’s Party, Maria tells Bucky she wants to ask Peggy to marry her.</p><p>A second installment of the Chubby Punk Bucky/Tiny Tattoo Artist Steve AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeps Me Warm, Makes You Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to [alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody](http://alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody.tumblr.com/) for cheer leading and hand-holding and beta-ing and also for being an all around super awesome person, and to [vanessadoes ](http://vanessadoes.tumblr.com/)for allowing me to distract her with capslocky texts. 
> 
> Title from Hell Yes by Alkaline Trio

At Stark’s New Year’s Party, Maria tells Bucky she wants to ask Peggy to marry her. Tony’s bitching at Thor due to his lack of holiday-themed songs, Thor being of the opinion that carols have been played damn near non-stop since Halloween and are absolutely unnecessary at this point, and Jane pipes in with how they aren’t inclusive enough. Thor nods along, and the argument is heading downhill fairly rapidly from there. Bruce and Clint are chiming in with all the names of Christmas carols that have nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever that they can think of over the bowl of spiced nuts Bruce brought out for the occasion. Almost everyone’s taking sides, with Darcy sitting back and observing the chaos with an amused twist to her lips. She’s a little on the wicked side. This Bucky knows firsthand.

The club’s empty except for the group of them,  _Closed for a Private Event, Suckers!_  in bold letters on the marquee outside. Bucky quietly excuses himself from the table and heads up to the stage. There’s an upright piano that Tony brought in last time he and Bruce were arguing over the best way to audibly recreate music only they could hear. It’s an actual traditional piano, not the all-metal monstrosity that the kid Tony’s still crushing on made for himself, so Bucky figures he can at least pluck out a couple of tunes. He sets his beer bottle on top and sits down on the bench. He reaches out and runs his fingertips along the keys, gently, closing his eyes. It’s been a while, but he remembers this.

He has to stand up and move the bench back, adjusting his positioning a little bit. He hasn’t played since before he left the army, before he put on the weight, and it’s throwing his stance off a bit. He’s suddenly, irrationally frustrated with himself, and he almost stands back up and leaves. He feels a tremor start in his hands; he might not even be able to play like this. He bites his lip, pulling at his lip ring sharply, but when he presses down on the keys, his hands stop shaking and the music comes back to him. He picks out a medley of all the Christmas carols and holiday songs he can remember how to play.

His friends’ bickering fades into the background as he lets his fingers decide what to do, closing his eyes. He’s waiting for it, so he can hear Steve’s footsteps as he takes the side stairs onto the stage, comes over to stand behind him.

“I didn’t know you played,” he says softly.

“Not that well, and not often. Obviously.” Bucky smiles, opens his eyes to see Steve staring at his fingers. The attention makes his hands falter, and he stops playing altogether. “But yeah, it’s something I picked up when I was a kid.”

Darcy boos from offstage, and Pepper asks him to continue playing. He starts over, playing whatever snippets of songs come to mind. Steve leaves his drink next to Bucky’s bottle and sits next to him, leans his head on Bucky’s shoulder.

“You just get sexier every day, you know that?” Steve murmurs.

Bucky snorts, his elbows brushing against his belly every now and then while he plays. He dismisses about fifteen snotty comments that come to mind first off, and then bites back the too honest “ _hope you always think so_ ” that follows. By then it’s been too long to really say anything at all without making it awkward. It’s not like Steve doesn’t show him he thinks he's attractive, that he loves his body. He just sometimes can’t figure out why. Steve’s surrounded by attractive people; Steve gets flirted with more than anyone he knows. He’s constantly ignoring passes made by customers and club-goers alike, but the offers are absolutely there. But he goes home with Bucky, who’s carrying about fifty pounds too many settled around his gut, who’s marked and lined with stretch marks and scars, with his soft face and a little double chin from the wrong angle. Since he's got about six inches on Steve, it's _always_ the wrong angle. And that's just the damage on the outside.

Bucky pauses in his playing anything complicated to pick out single notes with his left hand for a minute, wraps his right arm over Steve’s shoulders, pulls him in close to kiss the top of his head.

“Love you,” Steve says, turning the quick peck into a proper kiss. Bucky stops playing completely, his left hand tilting Steve’s face to a better angle.

“Get a room!” he hears Clint call out, laughing.

“No, don’t!” Jane and Darcy reply in unison.

Steve gives them all the finger and kisses Bucky for a few seconds longer. When he pulls back, cheeks flushed and a little out of breath, he grins, wide and open, and asks, “To be continued?”

“You know it,” Bucky says. Steve stands to take his cup back, then bends down to brace with one hand before hopping off the little four-foot-high stage. He lands a little awkwardly - his ankle's been stiff again lately - but he shakes it off pretty quickly. He walks back over to the table, and Bucky heads behind the bar, leaving the piano and letting Thor pick the music again. 

Maria throws her arm around Bucky’s shoulder, “I’m gonna marry Peggy. On Valentine’s Day. Ask. Wait.” Maria is about three sheets to the wind at this point, but she’s certainly sincere, clutching at Bucky’s bicep, double-taking with a slurred, “Go Steve,” and making Bucky chuckle before redirecting her thoughts.

“Valentine’s Day, huh?” he asks as he disengages her fingers from his arm.

“Peggy goes in for all that romantic crap, Buckster,” she tells him, waving her hand and spilling the last little bit of her drink on the bar. “I’m gonna ask her to marry me on Valentine’s Day. Don’t get much more romantic than that!"

“How’d you two meet, anyway? Seems like different circles.” He’d gotten the story of how Steve and Peggy and Clint met at college - although he’s never quite been clear on exactly what Clint was _doing_ at college - in drips and drabs over the last year or so, but somehow he’s never heard the part of the story where they brought a _cop_ into the fold. He steers Maria to the lounger over by the dart boards, and settles her in with a fresh bottle of water.

“Robbery. Peggy’s little boutique got broken into this one time,” Maria tells him. “I wanted to ask her out so bad, this knockout lady in her vintage shop. Glass shattered and sparkling around her feet. Ridiculous.” Maria huffs, tries to drink from her empty glass and frowns. “Figured even if she didn’t walk on my side of the street she wouldn’t be mean about it. Not in a store like that, in a neighborhood like that.”

Bucky nods to keep her talking, opens her water for her and takes the glass from her hand. It’d been gin and tonics all night, heavy on the gin because _hey, open bar!_

“But I couldn’t work it into the conversation, you know, on account of the fact that she was gorgeous and I was in the middle of an active investigation. Hadn't technically cleared her as a suspect yet. It's always an inside job," she sighs.

"Instead I chickened out and just left and hit the bar. Not Stark’s bar, the cop bar. I wasn’t coming to Stark’s places yet.”

“Of course not.”

“So I was at the bar, listening to the old timers tell the same three tired stories over and over, and Peggy came in, wearing this gorgeous red number and turned every head in the place.” She smiles, and Bucky can just imagine what a picture that must have been.

“She came in, stopped right in front of me. Ordered a whiskey, neat, and asked me out for dancing ‘when all of this is over.’ I just nodded like a dumbass.”

“I did the same thing with Steve,” Bucky says, smiling fondly. He spots Steve across the room, all flushed from alcohol and sincere in whatever he’s telling Clint and Coulson about, Bruce interjecting now and then to corroborate. “Seems to be their super power, those two. Making us nod along like dumbasses when they ask us out.”

Maria snorts out a laugh, “Luckily they took pity on us, then, right?”

Bucky clinks his beer bottle against Maria’s water. “Damn lucky.”

“When the case wrapped - just some kids trying to act big and bad, crying like babies when their parents had to come to the station to pull them out of a lineup. They still drop by the station to invite me to graduations and show off baby pictures. Real success stories. Been together ever since. That was, god, five years ago now? Time to make an honest woman out of one of us.”

“Her,” Bucky teases.

“Her, definitely.” Maria smiles, then turns serious. “But this proposal thing. It’s a big deal. Valentine’s Day and anniversaries, they’re all big damn deals to Peggy. I’m not good at that crap. So if I combine ‘em all up, hell, then I only gotta remember one date, right?”

Bucky stands up. He’d been trying to avoid this part of the conversation. “I guess so. Hadn’t really thought about it.” He hadn’t met Steve yet at Valentine’s last year, and they haven’t really had any notable anniversaries yet. They haven’t even known each other for a full year yet. It’s ridiculous. He knows it’s too early to be thinking like this. Clint and Coulson have been together since the dawn of time, and they’re not married. Peggy and Maria, half a decade and they’re just now getting around to it. He and Steve moved in together after three dates and a wink - five months, but who’s counting - and he knows, _he knows_ the quickest way to ruin something is to move too fast. He can wait, if it means a better chance at making this work long term.

“You haven’t thought about it yet,” Maria states, standing straight and tall and if Bucky didn’t know better, he’d swear she’d sobered up over the course of the last five seconds.

“Nah, I mean, it’s early yet. I’m gonna,” he says, gesturing toward Steve. “I’ll send Peggy over here for you.”

“Don’t say anything,” Maria grabs his arm again, blinks and shakes her head. “That’s nice.” She squeezes once. “But don’t say anything!”

Bucky mimes zipping his lips.

* * *

 

Bucky really should have been able to guess this, but Steve and his crazy-ass friends have this ridiculous Valentine’s Day tradition of uncoupling (or un-threesome-ing, whatever the terminology is) for the night, all going out to Stark’s club as a group, and betting on who can stay uncoupled the longest.

“Wait, what?” Bucky asks Steve, lying in bed with his arms around him. Steve looks up at him, uses the hand that’s planted on Bucky’s belly to lever himself up. “Ugh.”

“Sorry,” Steve says, patting him.

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” Steve smiles, leans in for a kiss. He hasn't moved his hand. “But Maria can’t propose on Valentine’s Day. They’ll _definitely_ lose the bet.” He sits back up, crosses his legs, one bony knee pressing into Bucky’s stomach.

“The bet that you stay away from your girlfriend -” Bucky pushes Steve’s knee up, letting it rest against him, keeps his hand there to rub little circles with his thumb.

“Or boyfriend,” Steve considers. “Or both, if that’s the case.”

“Or boyfriend, or both if that’s the case,” Bucky continues. “You all go to the club, and split up -”

“Just for the night, not for real,” Steve rushes, uncrossing his legs and kneeling, hands on Bucky’s shoulders.

Bucky reaches up, grabs his face and pulls him down for a sloppy kiss. “Not for real.” Steve smiles and lays back down, head on Bucky’s arm. He starts rubbing at Bucky’s stomach again, big sweeping motions with the flat of his palm.

“Now stop interrupting me, or it’ll be Valentine’s Day before I know what we’re doing on Valentine’s Day,” Bucky says, and Steve sighs sleepily. “So you all get together and you all split up and you bet on who’s the most codependent, and who won’t be able to go without the other for the longest?”

“When you say it that way it sounds stupid,” Steve mutters. He’s halfway asleep already, all that energy from earlier just gone, his thumb slowed to little twitches now and then. 

“That’s because it is stupid, punk. We spent damn near the entire New Year’s party apart. We all did.”

“S’different. Always want what you can’t have,” Steve says, and then his breathing slows into his familiar sleep rhythm. The little fucker’s always been able to do that, just drop right off while Bucky fights to snatch a couple of hours each night. "Was Clint's idea anyway. Ask him," Steve slurs out. 

He lies awake for a while, slowing his breathing to match Steve’s. It probably won’t put him to sleep; it usually doesn’t. But Sam told him it might help, and it definitely couldn’t hurt, so he tries it anyway.

Seems like a game that could easily lead to trouble, and tempting fate has never ended well for him. He’d like to know if Steve buys into the whole wanting what you can’t have thing, but he’s not going to wake him up just to ask. He’s not sure what he’d do if the answer was yes; it’s not like he can play hard to get now.

* * *

 

Ever since the convention last fall, and the magazine spread that came of it, Steve’s been in high demand. He almost never takes walk-ins at the shop anymore, time booked well in advance, and he’s got some kind of consultation deal going with the magazine. He’s seen a huge increase in his commissions for album art and merch designs. Peggy’s making noises about looking for another artist or two to work at the shop, but Steve is seriously dragging his feet on that one, stubborn and unwilling to let anyone else to help him out. Tony’s been cracking jokes about opening a gallery just for Steve’s work, and only Steve seems unaware that this will cease to be a joke the minute he takes Stark up on the offer.

Bucky is so proud of Steve, so satisfied that everyone is finally seeing the talent Steve has, the dedication to his craft. He’s not so thrilled with having to share this part of Steve now: the phone calls that interrupt their evenings, Steve holding up one finger and shrugging apologetically when he steps out of the diner to avoid dirty looks from other patrons. The CD release parties Steve gets invited to, Bucky trailing along and hanging out with the girlfriends and groupies by the snack tables. The nights Bucky wakes up alone to find Steve still hunched over the drafting table in the corner. Or worse, not even home yet. The days at the shop when Steve’s too busy to bug. The dark circles under Steve’s eyes, and how he wears his glasses more often now, his contacts irritating his. dry, sleepy eyes.

The shop’s crowded more often than not, missing the long stretches of time where it was just Bucky and Steve in the relative quiet, once he learned how to ignore the music in the background. It’s harder to find those conversations that meander around in unpredictable ways now. Bucky feels his skin itch when he’s there for too long. Too many people, too much noise, not enough clear paths to the exits. He’s not used to feeling trapped at the shop. He’s always found it easier to breathe there, even when it was too loud with the music and the chatter and chaos and the whine of the tattoo guns in the background.

He’s been leaving the shop, slipping out unnoticed when Steve’s busy and heading to the diner. When Ruby’s there, she’ll bring him extra large portions and pat his shoulder as she walks by, but getting pity food is a low Bucky can’t handle too many days in a row.

He’s skipped the shop entirely this morning, added an extra run to his week, and Sam’s taken him to breakfast-slash-therapy-not-therapy-because-friends-can't-be-your-doctors-but-still. Sam orders some kind of egg white omelette thing that doesn’t look half bad, honestly, but can’t hold a candle to blueberry waffles.

“It’s just. He’s worked so hard to get here, Sam. It’s great. I’m so happy for him, I really am.”

“But?”

“But nothing. It’s great.”

“But."

“Dammit, Sam, it’s not about him, okay?” Bucky gently sets his fork on the table, clenching down on the table edge to head off the shakes before they can start.

“You think he’s leaving you behind?”

“No. No, it’s not that. It’s just.” Bucky takes a deep breath, picks up his fork again, cuts another bite of waffle. He eats it slowly, considering his words. Sam’s too damn good at what he does. Everyone he knows is too damn good at what they do. And that’s it, isn’t it?

“What am I doing? He’s out there, living the dream, turning down reality shows, and I’m just kind of … eating waffles.”

“Metaphysically speaking.”

Bucky points at him with his fork then cuts another bite. “Bingo.”

“So, what do you want to do about it?” Sam asks him.

Bucky shrugs. “Well, first I gotta get through tomorrow, where those assholes place bets on their poor social skills. As a therapist, don’t you have something to say about that?.”

Sam leans back, stretching his arms out on the top of the booth. “Man, I learned a long time ago to pick my battles, and that is not one I’m willing to wage.”

* * *

 

“Clint and Coulson always lose first,” Steve tells him on the way to the club.

Bucky snorts. “Why do they even start the game?”

Steve considers. “I think Coulson likes to torture Clint.”

“Obviously.”

“Not like that. Well." Steve looks up, then makes a face. “Shut up. Okay, gimme a kiss before we go in. After that, no more. We can totally win this thing.”

Bucky slowly slides his hands around Steve’s hips and steps into his space. He presses his lips to Steve’s forehead, just under the edge of his beanie, then waits for Steve to tilt his head up. Bucky kisses him, slowly, using his tongue to lick at Steve’s lips, but not deepening the kiss any further. He doesn’t want to set them up for failure, after all. It’s a ridiculous game, but he knows how competitive Steve can be, especially this year, since he’s been disqualified previously for being unattached.

Steve’s mittened fingers clench on Bucky’s biceps, and Steve pulls himself closer to Bucky, pushing up against him, making those little noises Bucky likes to hear. Bucky turns them around, crowds Steve back against the wall of the club, keeps one leather-clad arm around Steve’s shoulders to keep him off the cold bricks, his other arm down around Steve’s waist to press him close. Steve closes his teeth on Bucky’s lip ring and tugs, and Bucky forgets all about keeping things soft and gentle.

The door to the club opens. Stark leans his upper body around the door to shout, “You’re out!”

Bucky pulls back, “We’re not inside, haven’t started yet.” He holds Steve tight and kisses him one last time before pushing him back a bit.

“So. Happy Valentine’s Day,” Steve says, a little dazed.

“Love you, Stevie,” Bucky says with one last peck on the lips. They walk into the club, and Steve immediately heads off toward the tables their friends have taken over. Bucky hits the pool tables. It’s pretty empty tonight. The club’s atmosphere is less anti-Valentine’s Day, which would probably make them pretty popular, and more pathetic losers who have bizarre bonding rituals and a rich friend to enable them. So he’s got his choice of game table.

Coulson is sitting between Peggy and Pepper when Steve approaches, says his hellos and takes the chair next to Peggy.

Clint’s pacing the room like a caged panther. “I got this this year, really. I do.”

"Of course you do, sweet boy," Coulson tells him as he passes the table.

"You’re out!" Tony calls from the bar, mixing a frighteningly blue drink for Darcy. Jane’s at the other end of the bar, but she’s got her nose buried in about seven books and she’s scribbling furiously on a legal pad, so Bucky figures she’s a non-issue for the night.

"Tony, the rule is no touching, not no talking. They’re your rules, stop cheating," Steve tells him, self-righteous and a little bit annoyed. Sometimes it seems like Stark annoys Steve just by breathing. Other times it’s like they share a brain. Tonight is not a brain-sharing night.

Thor, along with Bruce and Maria - who appear to be mostly hanging around away from their significant others more than actually helping out - start up the music at that point. No love songs, but anything else goes. There’s a lot of high-end and everything is pretty uptempo. Okay to dance to, but definitely not grinding music. It’s pretty terrible. Bucky would rather trade it in for something heavy and angry, and Stark’s making faces over behind the bar.

Bucky lays his leather jacket across one of the bar stools and racks the balls. He grabs Clint by the shirt collar on his next pass round the room, convincing him to join the game.

"You're making me nervous with all the pacing. Knock it off and come use physics to do weird shit with balls."

"Isn't it Steve's job to do weird shit with your balls, Barnes?"

"Too easy. That's beneath you, Barton," Natasha calls, sliding up behind them from out of nowhere to perch on one of the bar stools and observe their game.

Steve turns his chair so his back is to the pool tables. Probably better that way. Bucky’s starting to see why this might be harder than he thought. Tell him he can’t do something and that’s suddenly all he wants to do. He’d never had a problem avoiding temptation before. Then again, it’s been a couple years since he stopped avoiding temptation at all. Now he sees temptation and invites its friends along for the ride. Seems like once he gave in a little bit, he lost all his willpower. Lucky Steve’s so damn stubborn, or they’d be out of this stupid competition already.

Bucky never considered himself a touchy-feely kind of guy before Steve. He can remember going out with his buddies while they were on leave, cracking jokes about how whipped they were when the girls left, en masse, to the restroom. The guys would complain, then duck their heads sheepishly, and go back to the table to throw an arm around their girl anyway. And it’s not like Bucky didn’t like to be touched or anything, he was fine with that. He just didn’t seek it out, really, preferred to keep PDA to a minimum, didn’t think he needed that kind of thing.

But with Steve, it's like he actually cannot get enough. When Steve hops up onto the counter, waiting for the last batch of cookies to finish baking, Bucky can't help but to crowd into him, nothing much more than kissing for the next twelve minutes until the timer goes off and Steve pushes him away, laughing, "They'll burn, Buck, back up."

Slow nights at the shop when Bucky would drape himself over Steve at the drafting table, limiting his mobility and making sure no actual work was getting done. Steve tries to draw anyway, and eventually Bucky learns that he always switches over to just doodling when Bucky’s arms come around him, Bucky’s chin on his shoulder, Bucky’s breath on his neck.

At the club when Bucky pulls Steve from the pit, sweaty and panting and so fucking beautiful. It’s even better when Steve comes to him, pushing into his space and sliding his hands around his stomach or back into his pockets. Steve leaning his head on Bucky’s shoulder so he can turn and kiss the top of his head. Sitting on his lap at the club or the shop or the diner. Spooning up with him when they go to sleep in the early hours of the morning.

He chalks his cue and breaks, but he’s pretty lost in his own head so nothing falls for him.  

Clint’s distracted, silently staring at Coulson the whole time, but he still manages to run the table. Twice. He chugs a bottle of water, shoulders hunched, looking miserable. Bucky takes pity on them both and drags him outside. Seven minutes later, he’s following Clint back into the club, watching from the bar as Clint drops a tray of shots off for the table.

“We lose,” he happily announces, and sits down practically in Coulson’s lap. Coulson wraps his hand gently around the back of Clint’s neck and murmurs something to him Bucky can’t hear. Whatever it was makes Clint positively melt, and when Coulson nods, he sinks down to the floor, rests his head on Coulson’s knee.

Bucky slams his shot back.

“No surprise there,” Tony grouses, refilling his glass, drinking straight from the bottle himself. He’s sending longing looks Bruce’s way, and Bucky’s already got twenty bucks riding on him being the next to give in, money passed to Official Scorekeeper Darcy on his way back in. She has a name tag and a hat and everything. 

Coulson’s got twenty on it, too, but he’s betting Tony will go to Pepper before Bruce.

Maria ends up at the dartboard with Bucky, glumly says she wants to propose the next weekend, but she's got a case that probably won’t be wrapped up by then. “I’m technically on call tonight, but nothing’s moving, so here I am. The weekend after that is some kind of planning activity for all of the neighborhood summer street fairs, so Peggy’ll be nothing but a blur of red lipstick and winged eyeliner trailing the scent of coffee and vanilla behind her. Hate to see her leave, love her ass.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” Bucky says, collects his darts.

Maria laughs and throws. “Still true.”

“So do it some other day,” Bucky suggests.

“You can’t just propose on any old day!” Maria hisses, glancing around, making sure it’s just them. Tony and Pepper and Bruce have given up as well, apparently, as they’re wrapped around each other at the loser’s table. Coulson waggles his fingers at him, so Bucky guesses that means Pepper was first choice tonight.

Bucky shrugs. Twenty bucks doesn't mean a whole lot to him anymore since most of his needs are bartered for anyway. He’s not sure when he got roped into being Maria’s confidant, but he’s content to let her bend his ear while he’s trying to make himself useful around the shop or here at the club, hanging out and avoiding Steve. She never seems to expect much input from him anyway.

“And I’m sure as hell not going to propose on St Patrick’s Day, drunk on green beer and in no shape whatsoever to be taken seriously. Peggy’ll run me out of the house!”

“Just. I don’t know, just do it,” Bucky finally says, throwing his darts one-two-three, bullseye each time. “Some night when you’re really feeling it. When you look at her and your heart hurts with how much you love her. When she’s woken you up snoring four nights in a row and you know if you’d just move to the couch you’d both sleep better, but you don’t want to get out of bed. When she brings you coffee first thing in the morning and kisses you with morning breath. I don’t know, just ask her.”

Maria whistles. “Damn, Barnes.”

“Shut up and throw.”

“So you’ve thought about it then? With Steve?”

Bucky lies, “No.”

* * *

 

Steve tells him about how Peggy told him it happened over burgers at the diner. Bucky already got the text from Maria: _did it. yes. gonna be a wife!_ , but Steve’s version is prettied up a bit.

“Peggy said it was perfect. No grand display, no big production. Instead of some huge pre-planned event, it was just some random night, walking home from the shop. Maria stopped under a streetlight and when Peggy turned to ask what was wrong, if she needed to call for backup, there she was. She said she could see Maria’s breath when she asked, but more importantly she could see her own breath when she said yes. She said it was sweet and everything she wanted,” Steve says, shrugging. “I don’t get it, but she’s really happy.”

Bucky looks up from his burger, “Sounds pretty nice.”

“Pretty nice? Okay, Mr. Understatement.” Steve grins at him, pushes his fries over to Bucky. “Want ‘em?”

“Sure thing.”

“Think I should draw it for them?”

“The fries?” Bucky asks.

“No, asshole, the proposal.” Steve throws a fry at him and Bucky tries to catch it in his mouth. He misses.

He thinks about the first time he saw Steve, tiny and sweet in his hoodie and skinny jeans behind the counter at the shop. “Nah, probably one of those moments that’s better left to memories.”

Steve nods and throws him another fry.

* * *

 

Steve had tried to talk Stark out of throwing Bucky a birthday party. Luckily for everyone involved, he was successful in talking him out of a surprise party, but that was as far as he was willing to negotiate.

“It’s supposed to be just all of us at the club,” Steve tells him.

“It’s not a big deal, it’s just a day.”

“It’s not just a day, it’s your birthday,” Steve says emphatically, hugging Bucky and kissing along his collarbone. “There will be cake.”

“Well, if there’s going to be cake, sure.” Bucky laughs.

“Let me do something?” Steve asks, hands roaming over Bucky’s shoulders, down his arms to tangle their fingers together.

“What?”

“Can I paint your nails?”

“I don’t usually - “

“No, I know, and if you don’t me want to, that’s okay, too, but. Can I?”

Bucky shrugs, “Sure.”

Steve pushes Bucky over to sit on their bed with his back against the wall and digs around in the top drawer of his nightstand.

“You just happen to have nail polish?”

“It’s possible I have been thinking about this.” Steve smiles as he settles down next to Bucky, reaches for his hand.

“You think about a lot of things?” Bucky teases.

Steve looks up from Bucky’s hands. “I think about everything with you, Buck,” he says softly.

Bucky feels his heart clench, the way he told Maria about. Steve kisses the tip of Bucky’s finger and grins, then presses Bucky’s hand to his knee, holds it steady. He quickly brushes the black polish over Bucky’s ragged nails, two coats each, and then shrugs, does his own.

“Fast,” Bucky says, impressed.

“I used to do Peggy’s for her. And Clint’s.” Steve inspects their fingers, blows across them. “Now, we wait.”

“Whatever will we do to pass the time,” Bucky wonders.

Steve knee-walks over, climbs on top of him, straddling Bucky’s thighs and kissing him in little pecks. Bucky reaches for Steve’s shirt and Steve twists back out of the way, standing quickly and moving a step or two away.

“No, can’t touch, you’ll ruin your nails.”

“I don’t care, want you,” Bucky reaches for him.

“No, keep, just.” Steve starts and stops. He steps back to him, kneeling again between his spread knees. He pushes Bucky to lie down on his back,  “Okay. If you keep your hands over there,” Steve says, carefully pinning Bucky’s arms down by his sides with his palms flat, fingers splayed wide. “If you can, maybe I’ll help you out with the waiting.”

Bucky could easily break Steve's hold on his wrists, but it never occurs to him to even try.

* * *

 

Bucky’s birthday is, for Stark, a fairly subdued event. Everyone shows up at the club, and most importantly, there is cake. There is a lot of cake. Instead of gifts, which Bucky would have hated, Steve and Tony convinced everyone to bring their favorite kind of cake, which Bucky loves.

Darcy brought pie. “I don’t like cake,” she says. Steve is offended, grilling her on what cakes she's had and insisting she'll like this kind or that kind. Bucky is fine with it though, because pie is also good.

"Cake or pie, Bucky?" Darcy wheels on him, asks suddenly.

"Cake _and_ pie," he announces, steering Steve away from her and over to the dessert-laden tables.

He piles a plate high with a piece of chocolate, red velvet, some yellow thing that turns out to be lemon raspberry and _delicious_ , and chocolate cheesecake to start.

Thor sets up the playlist they all got together and made full of songs Bucky likes or make them think of him or that they wanted him to hear. There’s even a song from Maria’s best man, Nick, who Bucky’s never even met. Bruce keeps coming to him every eighth song or so and telling him about when he saw them play this song live, this happened, or that this song would have been great to see with him because of some reason. Tony keeps discovering he was also at those same shows with Bruce, and they end up trying to determine where they were both standing, how close they came to meeting before they actually did. It doesn’t have anything to do with Bucky, but it’s cute and sweet to see them so excited, and it’s a side of Tony Bucky almost never gets to see, so he considers it a present of sorts.

Coulson’s checking his phone in the background while Bucky’s talking to Sam and Clint, figuring out where they were each stationed when Bruce and Tony had been no more than three rows from each other at a show a few years ago.

“Brought you another plate, Bucky,” Steve says.

“Ugh, Stevie, I’m stuffed,” Bucky complains, but takes the plate. He huffs out a breath, leans back in his chair and adjusts the waistband on his pants. He is full, but it’s more for show. It’s his birthday, and he’s decided his gift to himself is getting Steve all riled up.

“What is that, Barnes, your second?” Clint asks. He’d only managed about half of his small sampling, and Coulson had only had a bite or two from his plate.

“Third.” Steve and Bucky say in unison. Bucky grins. Steve swipes a finger through the icing on top of Pepper’s caramel creme cake, licks it off while Bucky takes a giant bite and closes his eyes. “Fucking good cake.”

When he opens his eyes. Steve’s watching him, pupils blown.

“Don’t you want a piece, Steve?” Coulson asks. He sounds normal, but Bucky sees the way he’s watching them, the way he’s been watching them for a while now. The phone’s been put away, his attention focused on the two of them. Coulson’s got his hand on the back of Clint’s neck, rubbing his thumb across the place where it meets his shoulder. That’s about as close to a nervous tic as Bucky’s ever seen from Coulson.  

“Nope,” Steve says as he sits next to Bucky, closer than usual, and rests his hand on Bucky’s belly before snuggling in close while Bucky savors another bite. It’s damn good, but he’s not really tasting it right now. He wants to focus on the way Steve’s thin hands feel, subtly pressing and stroking along his waistband, the way Steve’s watching his mouth when he eats, licking his lips.

He’s steadfastly ignoring Coulson and the way he’s very obviously not watching them. He convinces Steve to take him home not long after.

* * *

 

Steve’s on the phone in the shop hashing out details for contracts for another round of commissions he’s got through Coulson’s label. He’s pacing back and forth behind the desk, nodding before he remembers Natasha can’t see him through the phone. Clint’s been helping out more now that Steve’s so busy, finally off probation for The Incident, and Bucky’s mostly just taking up space on the sofa. He’s had enough, levers himself up and walks over to Steve.

“I’m headed out, babe,” he whispers, kissing him on the forehead while Steve argues with Natasha. Steve grabs his hand, squeezes once, and then focuses back on whatever it is that Natasha is saying.

Bucky shrugs on his leather jacket, not really needing it today, but unsure of how the spring weather is going to change at any given time. He wanders around the neighborhood, through one of the tiny parks that have sprung up in empty lots here and there. There are a couple of loose boards in the back fence, and Bucky stops to kick them back in place. He braces the board with his boot, finds a rock big enough to fit in his palm and uses his makeshift hammer to realign the slats in the fence. The pounding echos strangely off the buildings around him.

He loses some time standing in the park, only really notices when the sun ducks behind some clouds and he gets a chill. His hands are shaking a little bit, and he wants to blame the cold.  He should probably get back, maybe see if Steve’s got time to get something to eat.

Bucky doesn’t like coconut and he doesn’t like anything that looks like it’ll still be edible if left alone for three weeks. Other than that, pretty much anything and everything is fair game. They actually don’t keep much around the house unless Steve’s planning to bake him something. They either eat at the diner, or they grab take-out on the way home. Steve can cook, though he mostly bakes, but Bucky _really_ can’t cook. He’s never been able to cook, and living with Steve hasn’t changed that at all. He’s happy to join Steve in the kitchen, generally making a nuisance of himself while Steve scrambles some eggs or bakes some cookies or simmers some soup on the stove. But cooking for himself is just something Bucky never really learned how to do.

Growing up, his mom would leave money to get something for his sister and himself for dinner. Bucky was old enough to understand it wasn’t a lot of money, so they were always hitting up the two-for-one coupons at the pizza place, or the Kids Eat Free nights at the taco joint (where Bucky’d buy a meal off the adult menu so his sister could get her free cheese quesadilla and side of beans and rice), or the weeknight special bucket of chicken. Sometimes they had those pre-made meals in the freezer, but Bucky liked to save those for the times when his mom was working late and she forgot to leave them cash.

That’s why he likes the diner so much. It’s nothing at all like the fast food he grew up on. It’s what he thinks home cooking is probably like, and Ruby is like a grandmother figure to them. An inappropriate, possibly kinky grandmother who may have a crush on him or his boyfriend or both - the analogy falls apart if he thinks about it too hard, but the fact is her meatloaf is the kind of thing they serve in heaven, and everything always tastes fresh and new and not at all like it’s been sitting around waiting for someone to buy it all day, so whatever.

It’s not like he’d never had home-baked cookies before Steve; some of his friends’ moms had made them and brought them to school parties or whatever. He’d just never had them _from his own home_ before Steve.

Steve’s still busy at the shop though, a chest piece run long, and he’s got another two appointments to get to, so he can’t leave. Bucky offers to stick around the shop, but he yawns so big his jaw cracks, and Steve smiles and tells him to go on home.

He’d been exhausted at the park and exhausted at the shop and exhausted on the walk home, but the minute he comes through their door it’s like his body forgets about sleep entirely, leaving him jittery and restless.

There’s half a bottle of ketchup and three bananas in their kitchen. Definitely no chocolate chips, no peanut butter, no flour. Even if Bucky could bake, he’s not even sure what all goes into a batch of cookies. He’s usually too busy trying to get into Steve’s pants to pay attention to what ingredients he’s pulling onto the counter. He ends up laying in bed staring blankly at the ceiling until Steve comes home. He'd wanted to eat when he got home, and he realized he was actually hungry a few hours after that, but he couldn't find it in himself to get up and do something about it. Steve’s so careful to be quiet when he comes in, and Bucky fakes sleeping until well after Steve’s climbed into bed with him, cuddled into his side and fallen asleep himself.

When Bucky wakes up the next day, Steve’s already gone again, a text reminding him Steve had an early appointment, and an ' _ilu :_ )’ following it.

He stays in bed for most of that day, too.

* * *

 

It’s Bucky who figures out how to get on the roof. Sometimes when he can’t sleep, he needs to go somewhere, but he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t like to smoke in the apartment, especially if Steve’s been sick, is sick, or is about to get sick.

Bucky never smokes in the apartment.

It’s really not all that dramatic; Steve’s reassured him more than once that he’s actually pretty healthy now. In Bucky’s less paranoid moments, he has no trouble believing that. Tony gives him ridiculously good healthcare so he’s got a nice preventative routine down, and the shop is obviously a decently sterile environment. He’s pretty healthy when he remembers to take care of himself, or now as long as Bucky remembers for him. But when he pushes himself, deadlines creeping up on him or too many shows he really wants to see all in a row, or terrible weather that just won't break, sometimes he forgets and then it’s just a month-long battle of low-grade fever and sniffles until (if) it gets worse. So far they’ve been pretty lucky, but Bucky doesn’t want to push it. He's been able to read between the lines of what Peggy and Clint have said-not-said. It's not so much that steve gets sick so often, it's that when he does get sick, he gets _sick_.

So Bucky, after he picks a couple of locks and replaces some hinges, sands down a door to keep it from sticking, reattaches some of the fallen apartment numbers on the doors in the hallways, since he’s got some tools out and he might as well, figures out they’ve got roof access. It starts as just a place to go, away but not, where he can sit and breathe and not have to worry too much about sight lines and exit strategies and Clint was right. It really does help if he can see the sky.

But then there’s the night he feels like he’s suffocating, like the sky is heavy above him, ready to crush him if he so much as twitches. Steve’s picked up a cough he can’t shake, says it’s allergies and it’s nothing to worry about, but sometimes in his worse moments Bucky’s pretty sure it’s going to take Steve away from him. Something’s going to.

He’s been sitting stock-still at the corner of the roof, clenching and releasing one muscle group at a time, breathing deeply, evenly, focused on some weeds growing in a mostly broken clay pot someone left up there once. Lifetimes ago, probably.

Sam’s been telling him to find a focal point when he gets like this, when he can’t tell the difference between then and now as easily as he should. Maybe something up here would work. Maybe.

* * *

 

He starts a little garden. Herbs, some flowers. Nothing fancy. He doesn’t tell Steve. If it doesn’t work out, he’ll find something else, and there won’t be any need for Steve to ever know. And if it does work out, he can tell Steve when it’s nice and pretty and successful. Like Steve is.

Steve’s been a little distant the past couple days. He says it’s nothing, he’s just busy and tired, trying not to get the cold that’s sweeping through their friends, but it might be more than that. Steve’s got a lot of options open to him now. Maybe he’s considering them. Professionally. Personally. Both.

He drags another bag of potting mix out onto the roof. He’s had some ideas for what to do up here, but the little clay pots he’s using right now aren’t going to be enough. He stands back, mentally measuring, letting ideas and designs unfold in his mind while he tries to figure out what’s got Steve in a state.

The crowds they run into at Stark’s club are generally great. It's one of the reasons Bucky loves this scene so much. They’re accepting and supportive and even people he doesn’t know, who don’t know him, give him a hand up when he needs it, a rough pat on the back and a questioning eyebrow before continuing to pummel each other in the pit.

But every show brings out the asshole in someone. Some crowds are worse than others. Steve can handle himself, Bucky knows that. Steve’s been doing this far longer than he has, after all. Steve doesn't mind, looks forward to it: the shoving, the chaos, the barely constrained anarchy of the pit. That's a good half of why he's there. And when some fucker out in the pit is starting trouble, Steve the first one to try to put an end to it, regardless of whether Bucky’s there to have his six or not.

That's not when there's a problem. Bucky’s dragged Steve home with black eyes and bloodied gums and split lips more than once. Bucky’s always careful when he kisses Steve those nights, gentle around Steve’s ribs, but even more careful not to let Steve see how gentle he's being. Steve will huff out a breath, all, "come on, Bucky, give it to me. I can take it," when no, actually sometimes Steve can't. Steve’s a badass in his own way, but he’s still a tiny little asthmatic fucker who’s a hell of a lot more breakable than he thinks he is.

It's when Steve feels like he's being coddled, when he's being unduly fussed over, that he gets pissy like this. When Steve takes a hit and actually needs a hand getting back up. When Bucky steps in to have his back and the asshole he’s fighting with takes a swing at the big guy with the mohawk instead of the tiny guy with the traditional haircut and hoodie. When Bucky looks him over, runs his hands carefully across his ribs and kisses his bruised knuckles and doesn’t conceal his concern quickly enough.

Most times it ends with Steve exhausting himself and Bucky both, bossier in bed and a little more demanding than normal, which Bucky has absolutely zero problem with. He doesn't set out to intentionally rile him up, like he's seen Clint do with Coulson, but he may occasionally encourage it a bit.

But some nights it lingers, settling on Steve like a fog. That's when Bucky worries, because he can't fix this. He's tried telling Steve he’s got nothing to prove, in word as well as deed, but Steve doesn't want to hear it. He’ll say things like “You just say that because you love me,” or “It’s sweet that you think so” or some other self-deprecating thing, but Bucky can tell he doesn’t really believe him.

It might be because Bucky loves how small Steve is next to him, how he can wrap him up and hold him close when they're spooned up together in bed. He gets off on how easy it is to pick Steve up, brace him, fuck him hard against the wall. How Steve pushes him and pulls him and it's only because Bucky lets him that he moves at all. It takes a lot for Steve to admit it, especially when he’s been feeling like this, but he really digs it when Bucky manhandles him around a little bit, too. Usually it’s Steve telling Bucky what to do, even though he’s only just recently gotten used to how he can do that, he can want things and ask for things and demand things from Bucky, and he isn’t going to roll his eyes at him, or laugh at him, or just ignore him. Every once in a while, Bucky just grabs Steve and sets him on the counter like’s it’s nothing, crowds into him, lifts Steve’s legs around his waist with his big hands or flips him over onto his stomach and pounds into him, and Steve just melts for him.

Lately though, it seems like Steve’s been touchier than usual. More demanding and less soft, sweet. He has been busy, under a lot of stress. That part’s true. Maybe he just needs a night off. Bucky brushes his hands together to knock off most of the dirt. He rinses them in his water bucket, looks around. It’s starting to come together up here. He’s got ideas. He just needs to put them all together now.

* * *

 

“I wanna take you on a real date,” Bucky says to Steve when they’re lying in bed, cuddled up on their sides, Steve tucked up into Bucky, hand on his side kneading like a kitten, nose buried in Bucky’s chest hair.

“We go on dates all the time, though,” Steve mumbles. He’s mostly asleep, in that semi-miraculous way he has where he can just fall asleep, no questions asked, done deal.

“No. We go out all the time. We don’t go out on dates, like, ever. I want to take you on a real date. Dinner, movie, I don’t know.”

“You’ve already got me in bed. I think that’s backward.”

“That’s not the only reason to go on a date with someone.”

“Sure seems like it,” Steve mumbles. Before Bucky can respond, he’s asleep.

Their date ends up being a Tuesday night dinner and movie deal. Not traditional date night, but they’re not a traditional couple, and Tuesday is the only night Steve has off for the next month or so. They take the bus to this tiny Italian restaurant Tony recommended. He’d originally wanted to ask Coulson, because he was going for classy rather than ostentatious or slightly sleazy, but Coulson was giving him weird vibes still, lurking around with little lines by his eyes and a tight set to his mouth.

Steve actually cleans his plate; Bucky can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen that happen, but Steve just smiles and talks and laughs, leaning back in his chair and looking completely satisfied.

They end up at a later showing than he’d intended because they lingered over dinner for so long, splitting a dessert that Steve ate most of by himself. By the time the previews start they’ve gone through half the popcorn already and they’re still the only ones in the theater. Steve’s curled up in the seat, all tucked in because even though he’s bundled up in his ever-present hoodie, the theater is on the chilly side even for Bucky. It’s cute, and Bucky’d like to tease him about it a little, but he’s more conscious of how his sides are pressed right up against the armrests. He doesn't remember theater seats being quite this small.

He moves around in the chair a little, trying to see if there’s any way he can get a little more comfortable. Steve keeps laying his head on Bucky’s shoulder, then sitting back up after half a minute or so. The armrest is probably in the way. It’s certainly in Bucky’s way.

“You okay?” Steve whispers.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” Bucky responds in a normal tone of voice. There’s no point in whispering in an empty theater.

“Is it the movie? Because it’s pretty terrible,” Steve laughs.

“No, it’s kind of fun.”

Steve sits up on his knees so he can press into Bucky a little more. “It’s like you’re new at this or something.” Steve butts his head gently into Bucky’s bicep. “Do the yawn move, oh my god, how many dates have you been on?”

Bucky sets the empty popcorn tub on the floor and starts an exaggerated yawn-and-stretch move, lifts his arm to settle it around Steve’s shoulders. “Better?”

Steve turns a little and kisses at Bucky’s neck. “Much better.”

Bucky’s trying to sit up as straight as possible, minimize the way the seat is pressing against his sides.

“What are you …” Steve starts, cutting off when his hand on Bucky’s belly runs into the armrest. “Oh.” Steve’s playing with the hem of Bucky’s tee shirt, pulling it up a bit and tracing his fingers around Bucky’s navel.

Bucky can feel his face heat. It’s stupid, it’s not like he’s _overflowing_ or anything, it’s just a tight fit. “Whatever, watch the - what are you doing?”

“Shh. You have to stay quiet.” Steve’s grinning at him a little wickedly, opening Bucky’s pants and working his fingers inside Bucky’s boxers.

“Steve, what are you doing?”

“Shh. Watch the movie.” Steve’s hands are cold, but the way he’s using his fingertips, drawing tiny little designs up and down Bucky’s cock, they’re warming up fast.

Bucky looks back over his shoulder, ensuring they’re still all alone, and slides down in his chair a little, ass nearly hanging all the way off the seat to give Steve some more room to work with.

“That’s good, just like that,” Steve whispers, jacking him quick and just the right side of too rough.

Bucky bites his lip and breathes through his nose when Steve licks the palm of his other hand and uses it to finish him off, coming up with a flimsy paper napkin out of nowhere. Steve cleans him up a little, tucks him back in and helps him do up his pants, and Bucky leans his head back on the seat. When he sits back up, Steve’s sitting primly with excellent posture and his hands are folded neatly in his lap, both feet on the floor, staring straight ahead at the screen. His eyes flick over toward Bucky, innocent as a damn angel, and he’s fighting to keep a grin off his face.

* * *

 

The spring sunshine has finally done some good for the daffodils and tulips up on the roof - transplants this year, but Bucky’s already got plans to plant bulbs in the fall. Bucky’s thinking about expanding, maybe building some tiered shelves for the plants, looking into some kind of sustainability for some vegetables or something.

He’s watching the last of the sunlight disappear through the shop windows, absolutely nothing happening for once since one of Steve’s appointments no-showed, just him and Steve and the evening sun. For about three weeks in April and again in October or so, the angle of the sun coming through the windows casts the shop in the most beautiful shade of orange Bucky’s ever seen. Steve’s frustrated because he’s been trying to capture that shade in inks, paints, pencils, pastels, anything, and he still hasn’t gotten it quite right yet, and he’s only got about twenty minutes each day before it’s gone again.

“What are you gonna do with it when you figure it out?” Bucky asks Steve, looking over to where he’s testing pencil colors.

Steve smiles, slightly. “I got a plan.”

“Hmm. You got a need for anything fresh?” Bucky asks, looking back out the window again. "Mint, maybe?"

"You want me to make you some mint cookies?" Steve’s distracted, reaching for yellow.

"No. I mean, sure, if you want. But no."

“Good. I don’t know if I have any mint cookie recipes. I made something once for my ma, tasted like I’d squeezed a roll of toothpaste into them.”

Bucky huffs out an amused breath and turns from the windows. "I've just got some stuff growing. On the roof. Mint’s easy, but so are most herbs. Did you want anything in particular?"

"You started gardening?" Steve sets the pencils down, hops off the stool and walks toward Bucky.

"It's not a garden. It's just some stuff up on the roof."

"Can I see?"

“I guess.” Bucky shrugs. Steve pulls his keys out of the desk drawer, flips the switch for the ‘open’ sign in the window, starts cleaning up around the shop.

“What, now?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah, now. I wanna see while we’ve still got some sun. The shop won’t fall apart without us for an hour.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Bucky leads Steve up to the roof and opens the door, hoping there’s still enough light to see something other than the piles of found objects he’s dragged up here, thinking he’ll be able to make something out of just about anything eventually. He makes a sweeping gesture and then ducks his head. “Don’t get your hopes up or anything.”

“Buck, this is. Wow, this is really nice.”

“Nah, it’s nothing. It’s not a big deal,” Bucky defers, but he’s looking past the rows of flowers and leaves at the pots he brought up, the little pile of scrap wood he’s scavenged, the stacks of miscellaneous mostly rusted items he’s rescued while dumpster-diving on his walks around the neighborhood when Steve’s busy or he can’t sleep. It’s pretty chaotic still, not matching up to the vision in Bucky’s mind.

“No, really, this is. You really like it up here, don’t you? Is this where you go when you get up at night?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” Bucky’s thinking about the summer, on Steve’s nights off when they can take a six-pack (two for Steve to start a really nice buzz, the lightweight, four for Bucky to loosen up, mellowed and languid) up there and lay on some lawn chairs and watch the sun set. “Yeah, I guess it’s all right up here.”

“It’s really great, Bucky,” Steve says, comes up behind him and wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist, up on his tip-toes to kiss along the back of Bucky’s neck. It’s more comforting than sexual, although Bucky has no doubt he could take that turn pretty fast if he wanted. Instead he just bends his knees a little leans his head back until he can rest his head back on Steve’s shoulder for a quick moment, then straightens.

“Come on. Let’s get you back to the shop before you’ve got an angry line around the block.”

* * *

 

“Where’d all this shit come from?” Steve asks him, coming into the apartment, looking around at the piles of scraps Bucky’s scavenged and trying to sort through.

“It’s not shit,” Bucky mumbles defensively.

“Where’d all this _stuff_ come from then, Mr. Foul Language Police?” Steve grabs a banana from the counter and rips it open pretty savagely.

“It’s not shit. It’s just some stuff I found around. I was thinking maybe I could do something with it.”

“Burn it, maybe,” Steve says, his mouth full.

“Fuck, fine. I’ll get rid of it tomorrow.”

“No,” Steve swallows. “Bucky, hey, no. I’m sorry.” He pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand and tosses the banana peel in the trash before coming to sit next to Bucky on the sofa. He butts his head under Bucky’s arm, and Bucky lets him. “No. I was just. I was being a dick.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“Sorry,” he sighs again. “Bad day at the shop. Clint and I had to kick out three drunk skinheads, it was a mess.”

“You okay?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah. Clint’s pretty badass but he left right after. He looked a little nauseous, and Coulson told him he had to come home. Maria’s going to pay close attention to our block tonight if she can. Not an excuse to take it out on you, though. Sorry.” Steve kisses his jaw, right where it just starts to double up. Bucky hates that part of his face, how it’s the first part of his body to go soft. Steve seems to like it though, kissing at it, gently sucking tiny little marks into it that’ll fade in a few hours.

“It’s fine.” Bucky bats Steve away half-heartedly.

“Tell me about it. What you’re planning.”

“ _Plans_ is pretty ambitious. I just thought maybe it could come in handy up on the roof. Seemed wasteful to let it stay in the dumpster.”

“Wait,” Steve pulls back. “You found it in a dumpster?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, standing. “Forget it.”

“Bucky, come on,” Steve says, standing as well. “I just. Be careful, okay?”

Bucky sighs. “Fine. You had to fight skinheads tonight, but I’ll watch out for roving gangs of scrap wood.”

* * *

 

Bucky and Steve want to hit up some flea markets now that the season is finally starting to turn for the better, everyone cleaning out their homes, making way for new stuff and moving on from the old.

“It’ll save you from jumping into dumpsters and contracting tetanus or coming home smelling like whatever terrible mess you managed to find,” Steve teases. He’s entirely serious about the smell factor, since Bucky dragged home a half-broken baker’s rack that he didn’t realize smelled like cat piss until it was already inside their apartment. But he also has a lot of passionate feelings about the disposability of commodities, so he’s trying to come up with compromises. Bucky’s just taking his trash finds straight up onto the roof, but he’s not opposed to hitting up the swap meets. They’re full of ideas, if nothing else.

Maria’s busy playing devil’s advocate with Steve, and Peggy intervenes when they both get a little too emphatic on their respective sides of the argument telling them that before the real flea market and swap meet season starts up in the city, she’s going to introduce them to the suburban tradition of the yard sale.

“We have stoop sales in the city, Peg,” Steve says and rolls his eyes.

“I’m afraid you don’t understand. This is not an artform in the suburbs. It is a war.”

They spend the rest of the night at the diner pulling up the classified sections of local newspapers, planning out their trip over milkshakes and pancakes.

Coulson, Clint, and Natasha come in then, Tasha clearly just off stage and Clint glowing in the glassy-eyed way that means he and Coulson have recently spent some time alone together. Coulson’s petting Clint’s hair, having just pulled him up from his attempt to sit at Coulson’s feet next to the booth. Clint blushes and sheepishly mutters, “Yeah, right, no. I know, I know that, right.”

“Do we need to go, sweet boy?” Coulson asks, just as quietly, concerned.

Clint shakes his head, smiles. “No. I’m good, promise. I just forgot for a minute. I’m leveling out, honest.”

Bucky hadn’t meant to eavesdrop or stare, but apparently he had been, because when he blinks, Steve’s clearing his throat, trying to play peacemaker between Maria and Peggy and what appears to be a fairly heated argument -

“Discussion,” Peggy says.

“Debate,” Maria calls it.

“Fight,” the rest of them agree.

\- about whether living in the suburbs has advantages over the city. Peggy’s coming down on the “friends, lifestyle, environment!” side and from what Bucky gathers, Maria’s angrily quoting crime rate statistics and, for some reason, information about property taxes and school systems. Their voices rise and then abruptly cut off, with Maria close to stomping out, and Peggy making excuses as she leaves, tight-lipped and tense.

Clint’s turned as close into Coulson as he can physically be, and Natasha’s stroking his wrist. “It’s just wedding nerves,” she reassures them. “There will be a few more of these between now and October. Don’t worry.”

“They set a date, then?” Coulson asks, tightening his hold on Clint’s shoulders.

Natasha, Steve, and Bucky all confirm, “The second.”

“Then yes, I’d say we’re in for a few more of these in the next few months.” Coulson confirms. Clint glances at him, and he pulls him in closer to kiss his temple. “Weddings are stressful.”

“Then why do it?” Clint asks, seeming a little more stable now, and Steve raises his cup to clink it against Clint’s in solidarity.

Bucky looks down at the table.

Coulson and Natasha start talking about the importance of public declarations of intent and symbolism and honoring traditions, but Bucky’s mostly stopped listening. He’s pushing what’s left of his second order of pancakes around the plate, no longer really in the mood to finish them off for Steve, since Steve’s rather emphatically agreeing with Clint that “a piece of paper changes nothing” and “it’s simply an outdated business arrangement,” and something more about not being property to be bought and sold like livestock.

“Tell us how you really feel, Steve,” Natasha laughs, and Bucky forces himself to smile.

“No, I just don’t get it is all,” Steve says, finishing the last of his milkshake. “Right, Buck?”

Bucky’s still smiling. He’s sure he’s still smiling. “Never thought about it. Excuse me.” He pulls himself out of the booth and heads to the restroom to wash his shaking hands.

* * *

 

Bucky’s downstairs at the apartment to check the mail and the damn box has fallen again, hanging on but just barely. He detours to the hardware shop where he’s quickly becoming a regular to find some drywall screws. Back in the lobby, one of their neighbors, the pregnant lady who sometimes comes into the diner while they’re there to order an extra large peanut butter milkshake, comes by. He steps back out of the way, lets her check the mail.

She shuffles through her mail, asks in heavily accented English if he’s the new super. Bucky thinks about responding in Spanish. It’s been a while since he’s really used his language skills, other than speaking with the guys at the liquor store or ordering in Russian when he gets the chance to impress Steve. Steve speaks French like he was born to do it, but outside of the bedroom, there’s not really much call for it.

In the end, he’s debated too long, it’s quickly becoming awkward, so he just shakes his head. She sighs, exasperated, and he asks if something is wrong.  She hesitantly explains her door is sticking, the lock hard to engage, slipping back and forth between languages when she realizes he understands, utilizing whichever words work best to communicate her message.

Bucky reassures her it’s an easy fix, follows her upstairs to work on the lock.

“Your Steve,” she says, sitting down and sweating the way pregnant ladies do. Not that he’d say that to her face; she’s obviously _glowing_. “He no is sick now?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, he’s doing well.”

“He work too hard?” She glares at him, as if his personal well-being depends on his answer. It does, so he laughs.

“I couldn’t stop him if I tried, but I do try.”

“You good for him,” she says, nodding firmly. They’re probably the same age, but Bucky feels like he just received the blessing from a well-respected elder. She thanks him when he stands a few minutes later, finished with the door. He tells her to come get him if it gives her any more trouble, and he heads down the stairs, wonders what’s going on at the shop.

* * *

 

Peggy and Maria have apparently made up by Saturday morning, Peggy arriving in a sweet little vintage-style dress she made, and Maria in tailored jeans and a waistcoat. They made an appealing picture, all told.

“No one told me this was a dress up occasion,” Bucky mock-complains, gesturing at his snug ripped jeans, leather jacket, and button up.

“You look good,” Steve mutters from behind his coffee and giant bug-eyed sunglasses.

“Thank you, baby,” Bucky whispers in his ear and kisses him on his lightly stubbled cheek.

“Someone a little hungover this morning?” Maria asks, laughing.

“Nah, he was up working until - wait, you been to bed yet, Stevie?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Josephina will hunt me down if I let you get sick, you know.”

“The pregnant lady on three?” Steve asks, brow wrinkled in confusion.

“Yeah, fixed her lock. She asked about you.”

“Huh,” Steve climbs into the backseat of the van beside Bucky and promptly falls asleep on Bucky’s lap. Bucky, Maria and Peggy spend the rest of the trip discussing venues for their wedding.

Bucky runs his fingers through Steve’s hair and doesn’t think about it too much, grunting noncommittally when they remember he’s there and ask for his opinion.

Steve’s a little more awake when they pull up to the first sale, but the dark circles under his eyes are there to stay. Bucky needs to try to get him away from everything for a weekend. Maybe he’ll talk to Stark or Coulson. They’re sure to know somewhere they can go, assuming he can convince Steve his career won’t fall apart if he spends more than an hour and a half not focused on it.

The first sale is a bust, but at the next one they find these ancient lawn chairs that Bucky will be able to tune up - just a little oil and some elbow grease, re-weaving a couple of the seats, nothing much - but it’ll be nice to make something work. There are a few cabinets, some garden racks, a small table or two that he haggles and pays for, thankful Peggy had the foresight to borrow a van.

“Who do we know that has a van?” Bucky asks, loading the last of it into the back.

“Pepper,” the three of them say, as if that was obvious. It really was.

* * *

 

It’s pretty early on Monday, and Steve’s mostly just futzing around, doodling out some preliminary sketches, capturing ideas from a dream before they leave him completely. Bucky’s pretty full from breakfast still. He covertly flips the neon “open” sign back off behind Steve’s back before collapsing on the couch in the reception area and unbuttoning his pants. He’s looking at a new tattoo magazine - not one that Steve’s in, shockingly - but really he’s watching Steve. He stretches, ensuring his t-shirt rides up a little bit. Steve looks up at him, gaze lingering on Bucky’s stomach before he glances back down.

Bucky smiles, moves his hand to his belly, casually rubbing his fingers back and forth, inching the hem of his shirt up just a little bit more.

Steve swallows.

“Everything okay there, Steve?” Bucky slowly turns the page, then lowers his hand back down to his waistband, pushes his fingers in a little bit and watching as the flesh there jiggles a little bit.

“I’m good.”

“Need some water?” Bucky asks, cool as a cucumber, before he splays his hand out across his belly. He doesn’t look up from the magazine.

“No. No, I’m okay.”

“Hmm. Okay,” Bucky murmurs, feigning nonchalance, but Steve hasn’t returned his attention back to his paper in about two minutes now, and if he holds that pencil any tighter, it’s going to snap in two. It’s not a fancy one, and Bucky’s really hoping he can get Steve to break it.

He flexes his arms, shifts in his seat, lets his legs fall open a little bit more and feels the zipper loosen, just sliding down a little bit, but enough that Steve catches the movement. He can feel the way the fabric of his pants is pulled tight near the seams on his thighs. He hears Steve let out a short little high-pitched whine and bites his lip hard to stop himself from smiling.

Bucky squeezes his hand again, fingers just denting in the soft flesh of his belly, a little offset to the rhythm of the music Steve set to play in the background.

“You know I know what you’re doing,” Steve says, voice low and a little raspy.

“Dunno what you’re talking about, Stevie. M’reading.”

“I am at work, Bucky. In public. Someone could walk through that door right now,” Steve says, but he’s set the pencil down - whole, dammit - and he’s adjusting himself behind the hem of his hoodie.

“Yeah,” Bucky drawls. “That sure would be awful if that were to happen.”

“You are the worst.”

“Want me to stop?”

Steve shuffles over to the reception desk. “Nope,” he says, as he reaches to flip the sign to off, but stops short when he notices the switch is already down. “Jerk. Just pull the blinds already and give me like, five, ten minutes.”

* * *

 

Bucky’s phone chimes and then Steve’s phone chimes seconds later. Tony’s sent out a mass text to “suit up” and meet him outside the club Friday at seven.

Steve calls him for details, but all Tony will tell him is, “Dress nice. Food’s on me.”

He answers every other question with the single word “ _Assemble!_ ” and then cackles to himself and refuses to say anything else.

“He always been this much of a drama queen?” Bucky asks Steve, digging through his drawers for a tie.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Steve nods, then comes out of the bathroom dressed in one of Bucky’s nicer shirts. It hangs down to almost Steve’s knees and the cuffs keep falling below Steve’s hands.

“You look real nice, there, Stevie,” Bucky says, bending down and pulling the collar of the shirt to one side to suck at Steve’s throat. “But I don’t think this is what Stark had in mind.”

“Not wearing it for him,” Steve says, already shoving his hands into Bucky’s back pockets.

* * *

 

Bucky’d asked a while back, when all of this was still new, how Tony could afford to run an entire club that seemed to mostly cater to his friends and his own whims. Steve told him he’d made a large chunk of money (his money, he’d also apparently inherited a shit ton from all the other businesses that Pepper now runs for him) from opening and running a chain of Hot Topic-esque stores.

He laughed, prepared to ride that train for all it was worth, until Stark shut him down with an incredibly eloquent presentation on representation and corporate culture, access, and the isolationism of elitism. Pepper stepped in before too long and dragged Tony away.

Bucky’d asked Bruce to make his apologies, but Bruce waved him off and told him that was actually how he and Tony met, fell in love, hooked up, and committed to each other all in one 48-hour period when they were snowed in at an airport. Bucky’s not sure if Pepper was in on it or if it was a happy accident, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask about the mechanics of his new friends’ three-way relationship.

* * *

 

They end up piling into a limo and pulling up at this vaguely fancy restaurant in various interpretations of the words “dress nice.” Stark honestly should have known to be far more specific.

Maria and Peggy look positively radiant, and Pepper and Natasha could possibly take over the world in those dresses. Pepper’s shoes are those black ones that are red on bottom and Bucky knows that means something, though he doesn’t know what. Even Jane coos over them, so they are apparently Big Deal shoes. Thor is in a tux complete with tails, which, okay, certainly is fancy. Darcy is wearing something that’s mostly sheer, and when she moves, Bucky can see what he thinks is a chest piece flowing from underneath her breasts and spreading around her ribs.

He nudges Steve. “Did you do her piece?”

Steve squints, “Darcy’s? Yeah, first and last pointillism tat I ever want to do.”

"Still, I bet it was worth it,” Bucky leers, exaggerating to get a rise out of Steve.

“Why?” Steve questions, still squinting up at him.  

“You know,” he trails off, his hands uselessly in front of his chest. “So, you’re not on team boob at all, then,” he says, giving up.

Steve quirks his mouth. “They look soft, I guess? That part’s okay.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Maria sing-songs at them, appearing behind them like some kind of ninja. She’s lucky Bucky’s still a little blissed out from the blowjob Steve gave him earlier, or she might be nursing a black eye after a stunt like that.

She ducks her head in apology, and Bucky waves her off. They’re good.

Clint and Coulson meet them at the restaurant. Coulson is, of course, in one of his luxurious suits, and Bucky’s never really had a thing for sugar daddies, but he might get the appeal looking at Coulson like that.

Clint is in a gown. Not a prom dress reject monstrosity like last time - this is a beautifully cut evening gown, something he could see Pepper or Peggy wearing. It’s sleeveless, going up over one shoulder, but leaving Clint’s muscular arms and back bare, save for the tattoo Bucky remembers brought him to Steve in the first place. The dress nips in at his waist and it’s slit damn near up to his eyeballs on the side. Bucky wouldn’t call it drag, because Clint’s done nothing else to disguise his masculinity; he’s not wearing any makeup, no more jewelry than normal, though he is wearing heels. Coulson’s not treating him any differently, other than slowing his walking pace and holding out his arm to assist Clint up the stairs. Then again, Coulson always treats Clint like he’s precious when they’re out in public, so it’s no surprise he’s not any different now.

Pepper orders wine for the table, and everyone’s discussing menu options. Bucky’s watching the other patrons of the restaurant, seeing what’s being ordered, how it’s presented. Tony still hasn’t told them why they’re all there, and Steve leans into Bucky’s space and says, “There’s an awful lot of food here, Bucky.”

Bucky double-checks the menus, grins at him. “I think...” He pauses, looking off to the side consideringly. “I think I want a salad.”

Steve sits back. “Um, a salad?”

Bucky folds his hands on top of the table. “A salad.”

Steve fidgets. “But. I mean, there are a lot of other options, you know. I thought maybe, you know, you’d want something a little more … more?”

Bucky turns his head to the waiter, leans in to quietly place his order, then takes a small sip of his wine.

He turns to Maria at his other side and joins in the small talk around the table until the waiter comes back out to distribute the entrees.

Bucky sits back and waits while everyone is served, and finally the waiter settles this giant trough of salad in front of him. Steve’s staring, eyes the size of his own plate, and Bucky grins. “Salad.”

He takes a bite, some ingredients in this bowl he’s only ever heard of before. He thinks he sees Coulson frown in his direction, but Steve’s squirming in his chair ever so slightly, and by the time Bucky looks back down the table toward Coulson, his face has smoothed out and he very purposefully has eyes only for Clint.

* * *

 

Bucky’s in the alleyway behind the shop, sleeves rolled up, enjoying the slight breeze that's finally started up now that the sun's mostly set. He hears movement at the mouth of the alleyway, and is about to shift to a more defensive stance when Coulson comes around the corner. Bucky relaxes slightly, but keeps his weight evenly distributed on his feet, takes his left hand out of his pocket. Coulson doesn't usually seek him out on his own, but recently Bucky has noticed him watching a little closer, keeping tabs on him and Steve, showing up at the shop to pick up Clint a little more often.

It seems a little late to be vetting him now after all that's happened. He can't imagine anyone wanting to warn him off nearly a year after he moved in with Steve. So there must be something else at play here. The fact that Coulson waited until he could corner him without Steve or Clint in sight is worrisome.

But Coulson just leans against the wall next to him, a careful few feet down. Out of range. It’s not an accident.

"Clint’s story is mostly his to share, if he wants to tell you about it. But you remind me of him in a lot of ways," Coulson starts.

Bucky nods. “Sure, we’ve got a lot in common.”

Coulson pauses, licks his lips, seems to change tactics. "You and Steve. You're doing well?"

"Fuckin fantastic." Bucky smiles a little meanly, because it's true, but Coulson knows this already.

Coulson smiles back, tight. "When Clint first came to me, it was … heady. To be handed total control over someone like that."

Bucky loses some of his aggression. That was unexpected. "Okay."

"I'd had some experience, more than some, actually, and still it was sometimes easy to lose sight of what was best for him. Instead of what I wanted."

"I guess I can see that." Bucky’s really not sure where this is going, what Coulson’s trying to say here.

"He had a hard time saying no."

Bucky snorts. "That’s really not Steve’s problem."

"No.” Coulson straightens, looks Bucky in the eyes. “But is it yours?"

"What are you trying to say?" Bucky straightens as well, balances, tenses and relaxes a couple of times.

Coulson reacts. Not much, but enough that Bucky notices the change in his posture, how he tries to make himself non-threatening. “Look, Bucky,” Coulson placates. “I know Steve wants what’s best for you -”

“Damn straight he does. Steve’s” - and here Bucky has to bite back his words, because there’s no way to explain just what Steve is to him. Bucky shakes his head, walks away from Coulson a few feet, lights another cigarette. “Steve’s great, okay? He’s frustrating and generous and beautiful and stubborn and I swear to god if you say one thing about him, about me not deserving him, what the actual _fuck_."

“Bucky,” Coulson calls. “It’s not. I didn’t mean that, you two are so good together, that’s not what this is.”

“Fucking what, then?”

“I just want to be sure you know you can say no. That it’s okay to not … eat the cake.” Coulson shrugs, at a loss. “For example.”

“What if I want the fucking cake?” Bucky asks, feeling a little stupid because he has no idea what Clint getting off on Coulson smacking him around a little has to do with Steve getting off on Bucky eating. Oh. "I do, you know. Want the cake. Or whatever."

Coulson deflates. “Then okay. Sometimes it seems like maybe you don’t. But you eat it anyway.” Coulson shrugs, his hands raised. “I just.” He takes a deep breath, then continues. “Clint doesn’t like spankings.”

“What the actual fuck? I don’t -”

“Just listen, okay?” Coulson runs a hand across his face. “Clint doesn’t like them. I do. Love them. But Clint really doesn’t. Do you know how many times I turned him over my knee before he told me?” Coulson shudders. “He didn’t tell me. I had to make him tell me. I had to safeword out of a scene and make him tell me, okay? Because he could tell I wanted it. Because he didn’t mind, exactly, and it made me happy, so he figured he might as well _just take it_. It was easier to get to what he called 'the good part' if he just did it. And we both went in eyes open, I knew what I was doing. Do you? Does Steve? Maybe you don’t want the cake, but Steve wants you to want the cake. And it's easier to just," Coulson shrugs again. "Eat the cake.”

“I want the cake, Coulson. If I don’t want the cake, I don’t eat the fucking cake,” he growls.

“Alright. Okay. I had to check. I had to, okay?”

And Bucky knows that broken tone, has heard it in his own voice more than once.

He backs off slightly, with a tired “Yeah, fine.”

Coulson nods, pushes himself off the wall, and leaves the alleyway.

Bucky smokes some more, and stares into the shadows.

* * *

 

“Did Phil find you?” Steve asks when he comes back inside.

“Yeah.” Bucky watches him to see if Steve knew what Coulson came out for, if Steve could have put him up to it, but he doesn’t see anything off or different. Steve probably wouldn’t go about it that way if he wanted to change things. Or end things. He’d be direct.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Want a grilled cheese? We can go to the diner.” Steve offers.

Bucky shakes his head. “Nah.” He feels Steve watching him for a long couple of minutes, but eventually a couple of women come into the shop for their appointment and Steve has to focus on them instead. There’s a tupperware full of peanut butter cookies Steve brought in earlier and left in the reception desk, so Bucky finds that and helps himself to half a dozen or so.

They’re good, but for once they don’t make him feel any better.

* * *

 

Bucky's up on the roof with Bruce, picking the summer vegetables he’s grown to sell at Peggy’s on Sunday mornings. “I told her I’d bring a basket or two,” Bucky gestures at the baskets he’s made out of found items. They’re selling well, too, even though Bucky hadn’t made them with that in mind. He’s just wanted something to take the zucchini to Peggy’s. “Who knew zucchini grows like this?”

“Bucky, everyone knows zucchini grows like this,” Bruce says, gently squeezing the tomatoes in the next row over, plucking the ones that are ripe.

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, but you also thought Coulson was his first name for something like six months.” Bruce chuckles.

"It was four months and his boyfriend calls him Coulson, what was I supposed to think?” Bucky huffs.

“His boyfriend routinely sits at his feet and calls him _boss_ so maybe vet your sources next time,” Bruce says, standing up and dusting his hands off on his thighs.

“Yeah, well. Your boyfriend’s an asshole,” Bucky says, half-hearted.

“That’s why I have Pepper, too,” Bruce counters, and well, there’s no arguing with that.

The garden’s in good shape by the time the sun’s starting to set, and Bucky waves Bruce off with a few hemp bags full of produce as payment for his help.

Bucky takes some of the squash to Josephina. “Any day now, right?” he asks as he helps her sit down, back bowed all out of shape behind the weight of the baby.

“You bring me some of what your Steve makes with that.” she says in Spanish, pointing at the other two bags he has in his hands. He smiles, tells her he will, and spends a few minutes catching up with her, making sure everything is working right in her apartment before the baby comes.

* * *

 

Bucky sweeps his hand through his hair, pushing the bright blue strands in front out of his face. “So full, babe. It’s too much.”

“Come on, Bucky, just finish it. Just this last bite. For me,” Steve purrs at him. His thumb is running back and forth in little arcs next to the bottom button on Bucky’s shirt, strained already, threatening to pop.

“Okay. Okay.” Bucky takes a deep breath and oh, there it goes, little plastic button skittering across the table away from them.

“Fuck.” Steve pants, grabbing his dick through his jeans and squeezing, mouth open and lips red and shiny.

Bucky chuckles softly, wary of moving too much, too fast. “That it, then? Am I off the hook?”

Steve’s busy working his fingers in little circles in the gap the button opened in the shirt. “What? No, no. Finish it, Bucky. Come on. You're doing so good. It's so good, you're almost done. I wanna, fuck, I wanna see.”   

Bucky pops the last of the zucchini bread Steve had made him into his mouth, washes it down with a little milk, and lets his head fall back on the sofa. Groans out, “There. All gone.”

“It’s so round. Hard, Bucky, damn.”

“I know. Full. Hurts.” Bucky grunts a little, shifting and lifting Steve with his thighs as he tries to get more comfortable.

“Hurts?” Steve asks, all concern now.

“Just a little,” Bucky reassures him. “Make it better?”

“Yeah?” Steve asks, dropping off Bucky’s thighs to the floor between his legs. Steve pushes the tails of Bucky’s shirt up and out of the way. ‘Like this?” He rubs soft circles with his palms, sweeping around the whole of Bucky’s huge stomach.

“That’s not bad.”

“So there’s something else I can do then?” Steve kneels up, leans in, sucks dry little kisses all across the top curve of Bucky’s belly. “Something. Like. This?”

Steve’s hair is just long enough that Bucky can just tangle his fingers in it, tug slightly. “Maybe not yet. How about you take care of you first?”

Steve’s still rubbing Bucky’s belly, unbuttoning the rest of his shirt and pushing it out of the way, gently, trailing his forehead, nose, lips behind his hands, soft and gentle and soothing. “This is for me, though.”

“Yeah?” Bucky lies back, letting Steve take over, do what he wants.

“Oh yeah.”

* * *

 

“She wants fucking tulips,” Maria says. “Which one, are stupid flowers; and two, where the hell are we going to find tulips in October?”

“I might -”

“Why do we need flowers anyway?” she cuts Bucky off. “They’re just going to die - Steve will probably sneeze himself to death and then, hey! We can use them again. That is the only - _the only_ \- way this expense makes any sense at all.”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” Steve says, but it’s muffled by the surgical mask he’s wearing, fighting off a summer cold and kind of proving her point.

“Maria, take a deep breath. Come back from the bad place. I might know a guy who can get you flowers.”

“Fucking tulips?” Maria’s got her face buried in her crossed arms on top of the reception desk.

“Fucking tulips. Can’t say he’ll be able to do anything about the cost, but -’

“No, no, it’s fine,” she sighs, lifting her head. “It’s what she wants. I don’t fucking care. I just want her to be happy. If it was up to me we’d have gone to the courthouse and been done with it months ago."

Bucky takes her to the flower shop he knows. He’s been dropping some of the stuff he’s grown off there, and the guy who runs the place tries to buy as much locally as possible, all about the small independent business like the rest of the neighborhood.

Bucky’s wandering the aisles, getting ideas, while Maria chats about her tulip needs.

"Sarge? Oh my god, it is you!"

Bucky turns, immediately recognizing the voice. "Tim,” he says flatly.

“Yeah, man, hey! Wow, I almost didn’t recognize you.” Tim waves his hands in the general area between the two of them, but Bucky gets his meaning. “Uh, up and about, I mean, not -” he tries to backpedal.

Bucky looks down at his stomach, closes his eyes for a moment before looking back up.

“Yeah, man, looking good. Uh, healthy. You’ve. You’ve _really_ settled in, right?” Tim isn't a bad guy. He was a good grunt, willing and able to get the job done. He just always rubbed Bucky the wrong way, always saying the wrong thing, dropping a casual "what, can't take a joke" with an elbow to the ribs whenever anyone called him out on it. The kind of guy who never asked and who Bucky would have never told.

“Yeah, so, you live around here?” Bucky asks, hoping the answer is no.

“No, my girl. I pissed her off. She’s staying with her parents so I’m trying to bribe my way back in.” He gestures to the two dozen roses he’s buying. Up close, he’s looking a little scraggly, a little hollow in the eyes. “You know how it is. Women, right?"

“Uh, yeah. sure.” Bucky glances around, trying to find a way out of this conversation.

“Oh, hey, did you have a breakup? Is that why?” He waves in the general direction of Bucky’s gut. “All this?”

‘No,” he says. Maria comes up beside him. Close, but not touching, like she could be his girlfriend, if that’s how he wants to play this. She is proud, and Bucky is out and proud, but sometimes expediency is the saner option. Military, police; Maria understands.

“Bucky, are we…”

“We’re good. You done?” He forces a smile for her, turns away. “Tim, nice to see you again, good luck with your girl.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, “Yeah, Sarge, you too.” Tim claps a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, but he’s already stepping away.

Outside, Maria slides her sunglasses on and Bucky walks quietly next to her. “I was thinking ice cream,” she says.

Bucky laughs out a fractured little sound. “Right. What that scene back there calls for is ice cream.” He’s clenching his fists over and over again, trying to fight off the numbness and the shakes that are coming, the helplessness, the anger at it all.

“Well, we could hit a strip club but one of us is going to be pretty bored, depending on who chooses. I don't like short girls.”

Bucky stops, leans against the brick wall of some building, closes his eyes.  He wants to laugh, that was funny, the visual of Maria at an all-male revue or towering over female dancers even funnier. But he can’t.

He lights a cigarette, turning his head on the exhale so as not to blow smoke at Maria. “Tim used to love to take us to strip clubs.”

“He seems the sort. Thought they were all gonna end the night with him, didn't he? Did he ever leave on his own?”

“Not once.” He smokes, one knee bent and his foot against the wall. “Do you think Steve is waiting for me to get better?”

“What?”

He grabs his stomach in both hands, almost burning a hole through his t-shirt. “Do you think he’s waiting for all this to go away when I get better?”

Maria takes a deep breath. He wishes he could see her eyes behind her sunglasses. It’s hard to tell pity from concern without the eyes.

“I think that’s really a lot of different questions, Bucky. But I don’t think he thinks you need to get better. None of us do. And I saw him at your birthday. He is definitely not waiting for that to _go away_.”

* * *

 

When Maria tells Peggy how much the flowers are going to cost, they get into another hissing, tight-lipped 'discussion.’ Nothing's really resolved by the time Maria has to leave the diner and report to work, but Peggy leaves her with a quick kiss on the lips and an exchanged "You're an ass, but I love you. Stay safe." They'll finish this later, but Maria’s a cop and reality won't let Peggy send her off unless their fight is firmly on the back burner.

Steve and Clint start in again on how ridiculous the whole marriage concept is. Coulson’s not around to reign Clint in this time, and Clint is a little on the hyperactive side tonight, conversation making lightning-fast turns in direction.

"No, I get making it official I guess, although they have all the legal stuff covered. What's another piece of paper?" Steve says.

"Paperwork is fine, what I don't get is the fuss." Clint says. "All that money and shit. For what? A party?"

"Right," Steve says, popping a bite of hash brown into his mouth. "Because we don't have enough of those already."

"She'll get a new dress," Clint wagers.

"She's made it. It's red," Natasha says.

"Do you have any idea how many red dresses she's made?" Steve rolls his eyes.

Bucky leans back. “Clint,” he says softly, firmly. He waits for everyone to look at him before he raises his eyes. “Do you have a collar?"

"What? Yeah, of course."

Natasha leans back as well, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You're not wearing it now." Bucky points at him.

Clint’s hand goes to his throat. "No."

"Because when you do ... "

"It's. Oh. It's special." Clint says softly. "So it's not just a dress, then."

"There you go." Bucky says, and Clint grins. He really is sweet.

Steve looks away. "Tulips are stupid," he mutters.

"They mean love and elegance and grace, I think," Natasha says, regarding Bucky carefully.

“Fitting,” Bucky responds.

* * *

 

Steve’s winning rounds of shots for all of them from this group of assholes who came to karaoke trivia night. Stark’s got this bastardized version of Name That Tune/Music-Themed Bar Trivia he busts out on a semi-regular basis. This group seem to all be following the lead of some long-haired hipster scarf-wearing know-it-all, who has the audacity to scoff at Bruce’s concert-bought Genesis t shirt.

“Pfft, Phil Collins, what _ever_ ,” the guy points and laughs.

Tony has to physically restrain Bruce, who is all red-faced and spittle, screaming “Peter Gabriel is a _gift_!” and Tony drags him behind the bar. Bucky’s never seen Bruce that mad, didn’t know Bruce could get that mad.

Steve smirks - actually _smirks_ , and it’s not directed at Stark - mean as hell, eyes hard and jaw firmed. “You think you know a lot, then?” He folds his skinny arms on top of the table. “Bring it.”

You’d think that all seven or so people behind Steve jeering at them and warning off their group would have been enough to clue these jackasses in, but they don’t take the hint. Every question, Steve has the answer. Every song, Steve knows the words. The other guy is good, but he isn’t Steve.

Their tab only stays short of the upper triple digits because Bucky keeps doing Steve’s shots, too, drunker and more relaxed with each round, sitting there next to Steve, slouching in his chair. His hand climbed higher on Steve’s thigh, squeezing softly with each correct answer, his legs falling open more and more as he keeps downing shots, whispering encouragements that he tries very hard to enunciate.

Steve could keep going, all night and into the next day if he wanted, but he’s proven his point.

“All right, all right, game over,” Coulson interrupts, calling an end to the competition. “Take your boy and get him home,” he says to Steve.

“I’ll eat the damn cake, Coulson!’ Bucky laughs, drunker than he’s been in a long time.

“If that’s what you call him in bed that’s -” Clint starts, but Coulson’s palm over his mouth muffles the end of his thought.

Steve takes Bucky home, pushing him down the street and laughing when Bucky stumbles trying to corner him against walls, sloppily kissing him in doorways.

"You're so fucking sexy tonight, Stevie," Bucky’s saying, pawing at him, pulling his shirt out of shape trying to get it off over his shoulders without letting Steve raise his arms.

"And you're so fucking drunk," Steve laughs.

"Don’t make it any less true," he says, trying to push his jeans out of the way. He forgets his boots and gets tangled up, flops down on the bed. “Help," he whines pitifully.

"Useless," Steve kisses him deeply before kneeling down to remove Bucky’s shoes.

"Little bit," he agrees. "Where'd you go?"

"I'm down here," Steve says, tugging at Bucky's laces. He reaches up to twist the barbell in Bucky’s nipple slightly at the same time as he ducks his head down, nosing at the waistband of Bucky’s boxers, licking the soft red line where his belly hangs over them a bit. Bucky shifts again, helping Steve pull the boxers off. Steve’s lips close over the head of his dick, sinking slowly down, working Bucky to full hardness with his lips and hands.

“Not too useless," he says. "Right?"

"Mm, not useless."

"Not when I can do this,"  Bucky roughly grabs at his stomach, pulling it up and letting it drop back down.

"Not useless at all, Buck." Steve sits back.

“You said, though," Bucky complains.

"Just how drunk are you?" Steve asks, slowly pulling himself up on the bed to lie next to him.

“Dunno. Lots."

"Sit up," Steve says. "I'm going to get you some water.”

Bucky’s passed out before Steve comes back.

* * *

 

Steve’s in the corner of the shop at the drafting table, but he’s not drawing. He’s perched on one of the stools, enthusiastically explaining his process to one of the most attractive men Bucky’s ever seen. Maria and Pepper even came by and stayed; Pepper’s been looking for one very specific receipt in the file cabinet for the last forty-five minutes. Maria’s far less subtle, just sitting on the couch openly staring.

The guy had come in, greeted Steve with a Hollywood smile, and Steve jumped up to meet him, shook his hand and pulled him into a quick one-armed hug before making introductions all around. Antoine is a reporter, one of the groupies from the magazine that’s in love with Steve, doing yet another spread on him.

Bucky’s heard him give phone interviews before, but he hasn’t seen it in person. He’s not sure if Steve’s really that oblivious or if he’s just incredibly professional, but this interview seems to be focused a hell of a lot more on Steve himself than the work he’s doing here. Bucky’s leaning against the supply room door, arms crossed over his ample stomach, aware of every inch he has that this Antoine jackass doesn’t.

Clint’s leaning next to him. “So. That guy’s Steve’s friend?”

“Apparently,” Bucky says.

"They roomed together at the convention, didn't they?"

"Hmm," Bucky says.

“News to you?”

“Yup.”

Clint considers, pushes himself off the doorframe. “You know it’s nothing.”

“Not another word, Barton,” Bucky growls.

“Go to the alley, Barnes. You try to kill that guy with your brain any harder, it might backfire.”

“I’m good.”

“You’re really, really not. Come on, I’ll go with you,” Clint says, knocking his shoulder into Bucky’s.

“I’m not jealous,” Bucky says when they’re in the alley and he’s taken a few deep drags.

“Of course not, no,” Clint drawls. "Who would be?"

‘I’m not. I just. I didn’t expect that.” Bucky gestures toward the shop.

“ _That_ being the incredibly good looking man interviewing your boyfriend, or that being the fact that your boyfriend can turn on the charm when he has to?”

“Both?”

“Yeah. Little Steve’s had us all fooled at one time or another. Put him in front of a camera and all of the sudden he could sell war bonds in peacetime.”

Bucky looks at him.

“I don’t know, it’s a thing Coulson says,” Clint says defensively.

Bucky finishes his cigarette, and heads back into the shop.

“There he is! Buck, come over here, come here,” Steve calls, waving him over to where the interview is set up. “Okay, so this is what I was telling you about. I’m really proud of this piece,” Steve’s saying, jumping off the stool and pushing Bucky to sit. “Roll up your sleeve, Buck. I mean, I had a great canvas.” Steve smiles down at Bucky, twisting his arm around to show the guy.

“Was this your first here?” Antoine asks.

“Uh, yeah,” Bucky says. “It’s how we met, actually.”

“Right,” Antoine says. “Steve’s told us all about it. A lot.”

“Which might also be why it’s one of my favorites,” Steve goes on, charming and smiling and explaining how he worked out the design to incorporate Bucky’s scarring. Bucky’s used to getting looks of pity or disgust when people realize the design is about forty percent scar, but this guy’s impressed, intrigued. Steve really does phenomenal work; he has every reason to be proud of this piece. Antoine meets Bucky’s eyes, and Bucky smirks a little meanly, and shrugs one-shouldered.

When Steve pauses in his explanation, Bucky leans over and kisses him, right on the mouth.

* * *

 

Bucky’s pretty damn full, that chicken and rice casserole Steve brought home from the diner hearty and filling and not something he’d usually pick this far into the summer, but Steve’s fighting off a cold and he didn’t want soup again. It’s just sniffles right now, but they know to be careful.

Ruby made this casserole special for them, but she’d only give it to them if they promised to take it home and make it an early night. Bucky finished his second heaping plateful while cracking jokes about being extorted by a septuagenarian.

“Let me get you more, okay?” Steve says, reaching to take Bucky’s plate back into the kitchen.

“No, babe, I’m good.”

“Come on, Bucky, just a little more?”

“I’m full, I don’t want more.”

Steve smiles a little, spooning another helping onto the plate, “Bucky, it’s so good though, right?”

“Steve, stop,” Bucky says firmly. “I really do not want any more.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and gently sets the plate on the table. “Oh, like for real.” Steve’s fidgeting with the hem of his hoodie, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Yeah. For real.”

“Not for fun,” he says, softly.

“No, not for fun,” Bucky replies.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Bucky, I’m so - “

“Hey, no,” Bucky reaches out, takes Steve’s hand and pulls him close. “It’s good. We’re good.”

“You’re sure?”

“Wouldn’t say no to a belly rub,” Bucky says, pressing Steve’s hand onto his chest.

“Oh. Yeah, I like those.”

“I know. Get to it.”

After a while, Bucky notices Steve gnawing at his lip. He sits up, dislodging Steve's hand but pulling him in when Steve tries to leave. "What?"

"What what?"

Bucky cracks an eye open.

"So, is it every time it's not for fun?" Steve asks quietly.

"No," Bucky says firmly. 

"Sure?"

"Sure."

Steve nods. "Okay." 

* * *

 

Bucky’s down in the tiny little lobby alcove of their building checking the mail while Steve finishes getting ready to leave for Pride. He hears thumping coming down the stars, too heavy to be Steve, and he leans around the corner, trying to see past the landing. It’s Josephina, lugging down the stroller and diaper bag and baby.

“Let me help, Jo, hold up,” Bucky calls, takes the stairs two at a time to reach her.

“Gracias,” she says, panting and stretching her back.

Bucky sets the stroller down on the tiled floor of the lobby. “There. Better?”

She grimaces at the baby in the seat. “I forget bottles.” She looks up the stairs, back down at the stroller a couple of times.

“I can hold her for you, Jo. Or run up and get them, or just stay here and watch your stuff?” Bucky offers. He realizes it comes across as a little forward, but it’s out there now. “I mean, sorry, that’s. I’m trying to help, and now I’m making it worse, aren’t I?”

“No, that would be really helpful, would you mind?” she says in Spanish.

“Of course not, go.”

“I’ll be just a minute, promise,” Jo calls out, taking the stairs as quickly as she can.

He hears Steve call out a greeting to her as they pass on the stairs, and then Steve’s in view.

Bucky’s holding the baby, cooing down at her.

"One of us has _a lot_ of explaining to do," Steve whispers, because he doesn’t know much about babies, but he knows you never ever wake them up.

Bucky grins back at him; he can tell he’s all sappy the way Steve’s expression softens. One of the baby’s tiny little hands reaches up like she’s going after Bucky’s lip ring, and he pulls back a little bit. “It’s okay, she’s not asleep,” Bucky says.

“Then why isn’t she crying?” Steve questions, keeping his distance.

“Because nothing’s wrong with her right now, is there, sweetheart? No there isn’t.” Bucky makes a face, but the baby’s probably still too young to find things amusing.

“Babies are scary.”

“Nothing’s scary about babies.” Bucky laughs.

“Bucky, literally everything about babies is scary or loud or disgusting.”

“Gracias, Steve,” Josephina says as she rounds the last flight of stairs then, a little out of breath, and Bucky settles the baby back down in her stroller and waves off the thanks.

Steve turns instantly crimson, and Bucky knows it goes top to tail, and he’s laughing so hard it takes him a minute to hold the door and get out of the way so Josephina can exit the building.

Steve’s still stuttering out apologies while Josephina’s insisting, “is fine, is fine.”

Bucky throws his now-free arms over Steve’s shoulders, guides him out onto the street “before you can do any more damage, babe.”

“How do you know so much about babies?”

Bucky pauses. “I guess we’ve never really talked about it, have we?”

Steve shakes his head. Bucky tells him about his sister, skims over and downplays how when his dad died his mom was kinda useless for a while. She sometimes couldn’t get out of bed for a few days at a time, would lose jobs and have to make ends meet working evenings or weekends. He’d take care of his sister, definitely too young to be left home alone with a toddler, but he was responsible for his age, and the neighbors would check in on them a couple times a night, and everything worked out okay in the long run.

She’s whip-smart, but there was no way they could afford college on the temp jobs their mom worked. While he was off in places he has never officially been to, sending money back diligently for her, she worked her way into a really sweet job-placement program in alternative fuels right out of high school, no college fund needed. The only downside is she’s moved off to bumfuck Montana and now Bucky never really sees her anymore. They call sometimes, but there’s a divide there they can’t really bridge. He never told her he joined up for the money, and she’s never been able to figure out why he’d go off war-mongering when he could have done so much more at home.  

“So yeah, I like kids okay, I guess. I love babies that I can give back. I don’t really want any of our - my own, you know?” They catch up to Maria and Peggy before Steve can comment on his slip, if he even noticed it, the noise and the spectacle of Pride taking over the rest of their day.

* * *

 

Bucky has an appointment down at the VA, and he has to leave crazy early, since Sam is going to give him a ride and take care of his monthly therapy appointment at the same time. Steve’s still snoring softly in the watery grey morning light. Bucky bends down over the bed, brushes Steve’s pale green hair out of the way. He’d dyed it for Pride, but the green was stubborn in Steve’s blond hair, refusing to wash completely out. He’d been making noises about getting rid of it for a week, but he hadn’t had time to do anything about it yet.

Bucky kisses him on the forehead and leaves the apartment, locking up behind him. He stands at the bottom of the stoop, waiting on Sam to pick him up, taking the opportunity to smoke before the car arrives. He doesn’t want to have the conversation he’s about to have, but Sam’s let him put it off for long enough now that Bucky knows he’s not getting out of it this time.

“So what you’re telling me is that you’ve basically been counting jewelry and eating and screwing your adorable boyfriend and lumping around for the last year now, but you finally feel like it’s time to get off your fat ass and do something.” Sam says, flying in and around traffic like the crazy man he is.

“No, ass face,” Bucky counters, holding on to the oh-shit bar Sam insisted on installing in his lame little sedan. “I’m saying I’ve found something to do other than screwing my hot and sexy boyfriend, and it’s good. I just don’t know if it’s what I should be doing for the rest of my life.”

“Who said anything about the rest of your life, man?” Sam asks, slowing the car into commuter traffic and sighing resignedly. “Look, some guys, yeah, they need to come back, settle in, find a career and a purpose. But that’s not for you. You’ve got stability. It’s not traditional stability, but you’ve got a hell of a support system, you’ve got a flourishing relationship, you’ve got an income that you’re providing for yourself - Peggy told me about the chairs and shit you build. You don’t need a traditional career right now. You’re doing okay.”

* * *

 

When Bucky comes home late that afternoon, he’s expecting the apartment to be empty. What he’s not expecting is Steve sprawled on the sofa. Bucky’s mouth goes dry. Steve’s buzzed his hair, taking it almost all off, effectively getting rid of the green and making his blue eyes look huge in his delicate face. His lips are red, wet like he’s been licking them all afternoon. He’s wearing Bucky’s leather jacket, and his jeans, paint-stained and too long as always, are bunched up around his boots.

But what draws Bucky’s eyes, what he can’t look away from, is how Steve’s legs are splayed wide open, Steve’s hand cupping his dick through his jeans, squeezing in this little not-rhythm, watching Bucky watch him.

“Hey, Bucky. Been waiting for you,” he says, his voice about half an octave lower than normal.

“I can see that.”

“You gonna do anything other that watch?” Steve smiles up at him from under his lashes. “Because that’s okay, if that’s what you want,” he drawls, “but I was kind of hoping you’d want to, hmm, participate a little more.”

Bucky gets his ass in gear, standing between Steve’s spread legs. “I think I can do that,” he says, sinking to his knees. He palms Steve’s thighs, slides his hands up to press into Steve’s hips and leans in to kiss him. He brings one hand up to cup the back of Steve’s skull, strokes through the soft brush of hair.

When he pulls back, Steve ducks his head. “Like it?”

“Yeah, babe. Looks great.” He moves in to kiss Steve some more, pulling him down on the sofa and leaning over him, pressing him down with his chest and keeping his knees on the floor. He works Steve’s jeans open, kisses Steve’s little concave belly, traces his tongue down as he pulls his boxers down his thighs.

Steve’s breaths are coming fast now, his fingers flexing in Bucky’s hair, and Bucky licks down the shaft, over his balls, and back up. He’s never mastered the art of deep-throating, but he’s learned how to work his tongue to make Steve whimper and moan, pull his hair and gasp out his name.

Bucky presses his hands onto Steve’s hips, the jut of his hip bones fitting perfectly in Bucky’s palms as he sucks, flicking his tongue over the slit and Steve hisses out, “Fuck, Bucky, _fuck_.”

Bucky hums approval, and Steve squirms. He looks up to where Steve’s eyes are closed. He’s biting his lip, and he tightens his fingers in Bucky’s hair, working his hips in short little thrusts between Bucky’s palms and the sofa cushions and that’s it, that’s what he does when he’s so close. Bucky sinks down as far as he can, lips brushing his fingers where he’s stroking what doesn’t fit in his mouth, and Steve comes with a soft little whine. Bucky pulls back, gentling his hand and laying his head on Steve’s bony thigh.

“Was it - was it the hair or the jacket?” Steve pants after a few minutes, grinning.

“Whole picture, baby,” Bucky replies, standing up off the floor and flopping down on the sofa, pulling Steve to rest on top of him, his jeans still tangled around his knees.  

* * *

 

Bucky’s halfway through a pizza when Maria calls him. “You gotta help me.”

“What’s wrong?” Bucky sits up, instantly alert.

“Clothing. God help me, this is impossible.”

“Fuck, Maria, I thought there was a problem!” Bucky yells, relieved.

“This is a problem! There are all these choices and Peggy won’t help me and Nick isn’t in town yet and you have. To. Help. Me.” Maria’s voice becomes calmer the longer she speaks. It’s definitely in the top ten most frightening phenomena Bucky has ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

“Okay, okay, text me the address, I’ll be there in a bit.”

Bucky shows up at the shop and instantly feels under-dressed. It’s this snooty little boutique, menswear on one side and women’s on the other, with, for some ungodly reason, a giant display of lace and satin and silk and … whatever -  frilly, shiny scraps of fabric right in the middle of the store.

Bucky stops short.

“I know, it’s awful, right?” Maria says, coming up from behind him with two glasses of wine in her hands. She hands one to Bucky and downs the other. A severe-looking woman immediately appears to replace it. “But there is _that_ , so you can just deal with the panties.”

“Uh. Sure.” Bucky says, forcing his attention to Maria and sipping at the wine. “You know I’m not usually first choice for this gay best friend stuff, right?”

“Well, Peggy called dibs on Steve.” Maria says from the menswear side of the store, pulling a few shirts off their hangers to hold in front of her. “Besides, he’s busy.”

“Don’t I know it,” Bucky complains.

“Aww, lost the magic already?” Maria asks, holding another shirt up.

Bucky shakes his head, points at one of the other shirts. “No, it’s just. You know, he’s busy. I’m … less busy.”

“Housewife syndrome,” Maria nods.

Bucky’s absently running his hands over the silk stockings on display before he realizes what he’s doing, and returns his attention to Maria. “No, it’s not that. Well. Maybe.” Bucky considers, looks down at his hands and realizes he’s fondling some kind of sheer … shirt … thing. “Jesus, this place is a minefield.”

“Maybe you should try spicing things up a little,” Maria laughs from the fitting room. "I've heard it can work wonders!"

Considering the way Bucky can’t stop _touching_ things, maybe that’s not a terrible idea. He thinks about it. Steve’s never really expressed an interest in drag, but he pretty much took it in stride when Clint’s shown up in his beloved ball gowns. Then again, Steve wouldn’t apply the label ‘kinky’ to their own relationship until Bucky spelled it out for him, either. Sometimes Steve has strange definitions for what he’s into.

Maria comes out of the fitting room in vintage style trousers, suspenders, and a button down shirt. She does a little twirl and then trips on her own feet when she’s halfway around. “Shit, you’re serious.”

“Nah, not really.” Bucky says, stepping away from the stockings. ”You look nice. That's a good combo.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m hot. Come on, this is about you now.”

“No, come on, I’m sorry, I was just. You were in there, and they’re so ... soft,” Bucky explains, but Maria’s grabbed his hand and she’s already dragging him to the back wall.

Apparently, people shop for lingerie by figuring out some magical drawers system.

“So you’re going to want the thigh highs, obviously,” she says, kneeling down, scanning the drawer fronts. “And you might as well get the garter, too. keep em on while you're there. Small, small, where the hell are the smalls?”

“I. Um. I don’t want them in small,” Bucky mumbles.

“But he’s - “ Maria looks up at him, her mouth a small o of surprise. “Oh. _Oh_. For you. Okay.”

* * *

 

This seemed like a much better idea in the store. When it was theory. When it was just Bucky’s thumb and forefinger and the silky stockings.

Before Maria asked, “Do you want me to help you buy a razor, too, or are you staying natural?”

Bucky thought she was teasing, but the look on her face convinced him she wasn’t.

“No. I don’t think. Do I have to?” He isn’t terribly hairy, and he really didn’t want this to be a Thing. It’s just a thing. That he wants to do. Once. Unless he really likes it.

So he comes home, takes a shower, wanders around the apartment trying to work off nervous energy. He decides if he doesn’t do it now, he never will, so he takes a deep breath. Sits naked on the bed, and holds the stockings in front of himself.

Maria told him how to do this, “Not so much my thing, but I’ve watched Peggy enough times. Mm, remind me to come back here soon.” So he points his toes and rolls the stockings over his foot and up his calf. His sparse leg hair is there underneath the black silk of the stockings, but they’re dark enough that it’s not distracting, and it just feels so good.

He gets the stockings on, settles them on his thigh where they’re tight, dimpling into his skin just a bit where the elastic settles.

Now, for the garter belt. It’s got little hooks in the back, and he just about pulls his shoulder out of socket trying to fasten it before he remembers Maria’s advice to hook it in the front and twist it around before attaching the stockings. He is not prepared for the way it feels when his thighs slide together, his dick half hard under the little red bow at the front of the belt just because of the feel.

He attaches the stocking to the little belt and takes a moment to look in the mirror. They don’t have a full-length mirror in the apartment, so he can’t see the full picture up close, but standing back from their dresser he can see enough. He sees the way his legs look slightly slimmer in the black stockings. How they dip in at the tops of his thighs. How the belt sits on top of his roll of belly, hiding it like a present behind the bow. The way his cock’s framed by the black lace.

He’s sliding his fingers back and forth at the top of the stockings and trying to figure out how to wait for Steve, if he should pose or try to play it off like he always lounges around the apartment in nothing but lingerie. He snorts, and of course that’s when Steve opens the door.

He turns and Steve stops, closing the door the rest of the way by falling back into it. “Oh.”

“Uh,” Bucky says.

“Oh,” Steve says again, still leaning back against the door.

Bucky can feel the blush starting, his face hot, but when he takes a step, his thighs rub and the silky slide of the stockings feels so good. His dick jumps a little bit and Steve’s gaze is drawn there. He licks his lips. “Hi.”

“Oh,” Steve says a third time.

Bucky quirks his lips. “I really hope that’s a good oh, or this is gonna get real awkward real fast,” he says, stroking his dick root to tip, slowly.

Steve blinks. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Is it good?”

“Mm,” Bucky says, closing his eyes and stroking his hand back down. “Think you should find out for yourself.”

“Yes,” Steve says, and now he’s moving, up off the door in a flash, stripping and pushing Bucky over to the bed. Bucks lies on the bed, face down, and Steve strips, straddles him, sitting on his knees and kissing all over the top of the garter belt. Steve’s hands are everywhere, scratching little lines into Bucky’s shoulders.

“Wow, this is, this is, yes,” Steve’s saying, finally working his way down, following the straps of the garter belt down over his ass to the tops of his thighs, sucking kisses through the fabric all the way down Bucky’s legs, to his ankles and back up.

“You like it?” Bucky gasps as Steve bites at the top edge of the stockings, and Steve makes a tiny sound.

“Wanna, wanna fuck you in these Bucky, let me? Let me. You keep these on and -” Steve cuts off, rough kisses at the small of his back, trailing along the edges of the garter belt.

Bucky nods, hair scratching against the sheets, gasps out, “Yes, yes, that’s what I want.”

“Turn over, I want, yeah.” Steve’s pushing at him, hands sliding on the silk. “ _Oh_ ,” Steve says again, but this time the intonation is completely different.

Bucky shoves a pillow under his hips while Steve digs around for the lube, his thumbs stroking the spot where the little button hook on the garter belt has left a welt in his skin. Steve slicks him up quick and rough, but Bucky is so ready for it, he’s fucking himself down on Steve’s fingers, impatient.

“I’m ready, I’m ready, come on,” Bucky says, and Steve complies, lining himself up and thrusting in slow but steady, his eyes closing and biting his lip. Bucky moans out a long, low sound, choking off when Steve bottoms out, and adjusts his grip on the back of Bucky’s knees.

“So nice, it feels, it’s so good, put your leg up, yeah,” Steve says as Buck wraps one leg around him, his heel pressing into Steve’s calf, sliding slick and slippery. Steve’s thrusts pick up speed, his hips snapping, and Bucky reaches down to take himself in hand. he can’t hold back, he can’t, and he comes, hard, hot between them, and Steve follows a few strokes later, bottoming out and still pressing forward.

Steve pulls out, slowly, wincing a little and collapsing down next to Bucky.

“So. That was.” Steve waves a hand vaguely in the air above Bucky’s chest.

“It was.” Bucky’s cautious. It was good, it was different. Fun.

“We should probably,” and now Steve’s gesturing closer to their groins, and Bucky can’t help but laugh a little.

"I gotcha,” Bucky says, standing up and making his way into the bathroom to take care of the stockings.

* * *

 

When he wakes up the next day, Steve’s brought him donuts and coffee. He sits up and leans against the wall, and Steve sits across from him at the foot of the bed, fidgeting with the little paper sleeve wrapping his coffee cup.

“So last night,” Steve starts.

“Was good, right?” Bucky says, then takes a giant bite of a blueberry donut.

“Yeah, yeah, it was.” Steve shakes his head. “It was really good, Buck. Just. Is that going to be a thing? Are you. Do you want. Was that about?”

“Steve, baby, breathe,” Bucky laughs. “It was just something I wanted to do.”

“Because if it’s a thing, I mean, we can, you know.”

“It’s not a thing. It’s just something I thought would be fun. It was fun, right?”

“It was really, really fun,” Steve says, taking a sip of his coffee.

* * *

 

They go to the carnival again. This year it comes around about a week earlier than last, so they’re able to hit this place up - “twice makes it a tradition,” Maria says - as well as go to Tony’s cabin at the lake for Steve’s birthday. Tony calls it a cabin, but Steve tells him it’s really a mansion that just so happens to be near a lake. Steve’s pretty easily impressed by wealth, though, in the sense that anything more than the bare minimum is ostentatious to Steve. He still lives in a one-room efficiency apartment with Bucky, after all, and they could easily afford something larger now.

Steve hadn’t been sure he’d be able to get away, he’s been so busy, but he managed to clear his deadlines and Peggy and Bucky worked to arrange everything so he’d have this entire week free. Coulson’s making Clint promise not to win any bears this year as they buy their tickets and walk through the turnstile, but Clint’s got that gleam in his eye that says he’s aware of a loophole Coulson left him and he’s willing to exploit it to the fullest. He spends an awful lot of time around lawyers not to know the tricks of the trade.

Maria and Peggy once again split off to go judge prize-winning cobblers or something, and Bucky’s waiting for Steve to come back from the restroom. He’s leaning against the side of the trailer eating a hot dog when he feels that tingle on the back of his neck that means he’s being watched.  

There’s a group of spray-tanned frat boys and girls across the midway, full of beer and bravado, not-so-subtly commenting on Bucky’s appearance. They’re not going as far as laughing and pointing, but those kinds of guys don’t whisper at each other and turn around in unison for positive reasons. Bucky wonders if it’s his hair - fire engine red in front right now, slicked and sprayed into liberty spikes - his jeans, pulled tight through the thighs and ripped and frayed from the knees down, or his shirt, snug across his stomach, a little too small on him.

He can’t help it - he makes sure there’s no little kids around, and then makes eye contact. He’s just about to go for the obscene gesture he’s dying to make when Steve shows up, arms coming around from behind and resting on his stomach as Steve nuzzles at his neck.

He exhales, decides they’re not worth antagonizing, savagely finishes the last of the hot dog and grins at Steve, mouth full.

“Ew, Bucky.” Steve rolls his eyes, affectionate, kisses his neck anyway. “Finish that before you open your mouth.”

Maybe a different kind of antagonizing is called for here. He looks over Steve’s shoulder toward the girls, disinterested now and reapplying lip gloss, while the guys in the group are still posturing a little bit. He drains his Coke, swallows everything down, and turns to pin Steve against the side of the trailer. “Finished.”

“Come on, then." Steve squirms out from under Bucky’s arm. "Clint’s found an archery game."

Bucky shrugs, leaves one arm around Steve’s shoulders, but he sees Steve turn and glance toward the group of assholes still watching them. He drops his arm and Steve doesn’t stop him. He shoves his hands in his pockets, the hot dog sitting like a stone in his stomach.

Steve gives his a tight smile that's more grimace than anything else. Bucky watches his shoes as they walk.

* * *

 

Jane, Darcy, and Thor are off on tour again, hitting up summer festivals around the world, and Sam can’t get away from his day job, but it’s still a large group that leaves the fairgrounds after the fireworks display, heading to Tony’s cabin. When they pull down the winding driveway, Bucky’s forced to admit that _mansion_ is a much more appropriate term than _cabin_ for the building they’re going to stay in for the weekend. It’s easy to forget how damn rich Tony is.

Tony unlocks the huge double doors in front, opening them both dramatically. "Welcome to my humble abode," he says, raising both arms and turning toward them. He leads them into the great room, points left. “Kitchen,” he says. He turns and points forward, “Deck, pool, lake, dock, bar.” He points right, making his way down the hall.  “Bedrooms. Mine’s first on the left, divvy the rest up on your own.”

“Tony, that’s rude,” Pepper admonishes, but Bruce, in the most public display of affection anyone’s ever seen from him, slides a hand up into her hair and kisses her, hot and thorough, walking her backward through the bedroom doorway.

“Bedrooms,” Tony says. “Divvy. Yourselves,” and he slams the door behind them.  

They all shrug and grin at each other, and basically just wander down the hall opening doors on a first-come, first-served basis. Clint’s dead on his feet, and Coulson has to pull him back out of a walk-in linen closet before he tries to just curl up in the towels and sleep in there.

The bed in the room Bucky and Steve get is an enormous four-poster monstrosity sitting high off the floor. High. Steve has to use a little step stool to actually climb into it properly, and he makes a face like he’s not sure whether to be pissed off or crack up. Bucky pulls back the sheets - softer than damn near anything he’s ever felt before. There are also D-rings bolted to each of the bedposts, but Bucky’s ignoring that fact for now.

Besides, Steve’s already fast asleep, curled up on his side and fully dressed. Bucky takes off his boots, gets his jeans off, thankful that Steve’s wearing the ratty old baggy ones, does the same for himself and climbs into bed behind Steve. For once, he falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

* * *

 

Bucky wakes up alone, and wanders into the kitchen to find a huge box of pastries and Steve. Drawing. On Stark’s kitchen wall.

"So this is happening," he says, stepping back and squinting, trying to make sense of the pencil marks on the wall.

“It’s nice to see you’ve learned to just accept these things as they are,” Bruce says, taking a sip of his tea and stepping up beside Bucky to look at the wall.

"Stevie-pants is drawing me a mural," Stark mutters, hunched over a giant cup of coffee.

"A memorial mural," Steve says, and grins over his shoulder at Bucky.

"That's a tongue twister." Bucky says.

"Your mom's a tongue twister," Stark says perfunctorily. He might actually have fallen back asleep.

Bucky bites into a danish. “Memorial?"

"Tony wants him to commemorate the carnival," Bruce says, gently shaking his head. "Now that it's tradition and all."

Bucky can see it, Steve’s prefered steampunk-style, the rides and attractions coming clear now that he knows what he's looking for.

"He'll change his mind in a week," Steve says. "They can just paint over the pencil, but he insisted."

Bucky nods, but notices Steve’s still concentrating, a little furrow between his eyes as he carefully sketches out his ideas as if this was someone's full back piece, and not something to be destroyed on a whim. Bucky’s pretty sure this will be a permanent addition to the decor.

* * *

 

Steve’s spending the afternoon under an umbrella on the dock with his sketch pad. He says he wants to flesh out the ideas for the mural on paper before putting them on the wall, but he tells Bucky privately when they head back to their room to change into swim trunks that he just wanted Stark to shut up about it for an hour.

Maria is lying in the sun a few feet away from where Pepper, Coulson, Peggy, and Natasha are shaded by a large picnic structure area.

“I don’t care about a tan,” Maria says, “But it’s warm and it’s sunny and I’m damn well going to enjoy it.”

“Maria’s part lizard, ignore her,” Peggy laughs.

“Flip me in twenty,’ Maria says, and slides her floppy hat onto her face.

They all have floppy hats. Even Coulson.

Stark and Bruce are, apparently, back in bed.

Bucky and Clint are competing with each other in the lake. Racing, endurance, flips, dives - which, okay, Bucky loses spectacularly with a belly flop that makes everyone wince. Bucky bows out, climbs back onto the decking to towel off rubbing his belly and makes his way over to Steve.

He leans over to kiss him, sitting down on the end of the chair.

“You taste like lake water.”

“What do you want me to taste like?” Bucky grins at him, waggling his eyebrows.

“Hmm,” Steve puts his sketchbook down by his side, watches Bucky intently for a long moment. “We got some watermelon for later. It’s my birthday, I don’t think anyone will mind if we take it now.”

“Sounds messy,” Bucky says.

Steve stands, tugs Bucky along with him. “Up.” He looks over his shoulder and blushes when Pepper catches his eye. “Maria, flip!” he says, and rushes back into the cabin.

They pound down the hallway, tumbling into the giant bed together. Bucky takes the opportunity to pull Steve on top of him, letting Steve catch his breath and settle himself to lean down over him.

“I’m gonna ink you right here,” Steve says, sliding his hands across Bucky’s ribs.

“I get any say in this?”

“Nope.” Steve grins, then turns serious. ‘No, obviously, of course you do. It’s your body, I don’t want to do anything to you you don’t like.”

“I know that, Steve,” Bucky reaches up, brushes his thumb across Steve’s cheekbone.

“But I want you to like what’s on you. What is you.” Steve shakes his head, smiles tightly. “I want you to like your body.”

“You been talking to Coulson?”

“What? No. Why?” Steve sits back, glancing at the D-rings a little wide-eyed.

“No, nothing, never mind.” Bucky pulls him close again. “I like everything you do with me. And to me.”

“Okay, good,” Steve goes back to biting little kisses along Bucky’s side, too hard to tickle, too soft to hurt. “And you like this?” Steve slides himself down, continuing to kiss the swell of Bucky’s hips, down the outsides of his thighs while he jiggles Bucky’s belly.

“Not as much as you do.” Bucky huffs out a laugh.

Steve stops, sits up again. “See -”

“No, no, stop, it was a joke. Yes, I’m happy. I’m good. My body is a temple. I am so fucking full of esteem for myself I might just explode.”

Steve gives him a look, but carries on, kisses his way back up Bucky’s body, teasing him. He’s busy sucking marks into Bucky’s collarbone, one hand on Bucky’s ribs, one rubbing the underside of Bucky’s stomach, just a gentle slide of his hand back and forth. “Did I ever tell you thanks?”

“For what?” Bucky says, kissing Steve’s hair on the top of his head.

“For putting up with me,” Steve says, palms Bucky’s belly. ”With this. And how much I, you know, like it. Want it.”

“I’m not putting up with it, Steve.” Bucky says, and he feels Steve tense. “I mean, I’m not doing it for you. I got lucky that you enjoy it the way you do, but it’s not for you. Not like that.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, pinching lightly at Bucky’s love handles. “Seems like maybe you’ve been trying to do something about it?”

Bucky’s been running more lately, and hauling crap all over town, up to the roof. He doesn’t really pay much attention, but now that Steve’s mentioned it, maybe he’s toned a little more, maybe dropped a few pounds.

But he’s also thinking about the carnival, the group of people, how Steve didn't want to touch him.

“Buck?” Steve asks, his hands stopping their movement.

“Nah, Stevie. It’s just summer. More fruit, fewer cookies.”

“So you're not. I don't know. Unhappy?"

"Are you?"

"Fuck no," Steve breathes. He leans down to kiss his stomach, hands splayed across Bucky’s sides, holding on and rubbing across his skin. He settles between Bucky’s legs and noses his way closer to his dick. “Tell me then,” he says.

“Tell you what, babe?” Bucky says, settling his hand into Steve’s short hair.

“Tonight. The cookout. Tell me what you’re gonna eat?”

“You want more specific than ‘everything’ I take it.”

Steve bites at Bucky’s thigh, sucks hard, marks him up where he’s soft and pale. “Tell me,” he says again.

“Okay, okay. Well, there’s the potato salad,” Bucky starts, and lists everything he’s seen ingredients for in the kitchen. He’s not even certain he’s listing actual options by the time Steve closes his lips around the head of Bucky’s cock, his hand working beneath himself on his own dick.

Bucky tugs on Steve’s hair, the little bit he can get his fingers around, gasping and warning him in case he wants to pull off. He comes deep in Steve’s mouth when Steve just sucks him harder. Steve keeps licking all around Bucky’s slowly softening cock, his hand is moving fast on his own dick, only a few more strokes until he’s collapsed down, breaths harsh against Bucky’s thigh where Steve’s resting his head.

* * *

 

Steve’s laying on his stomach across Bucky’s back in their own bed, felt-tipped marker in hand, tracing designs across Bucky’s shoulder blades, careful to avoid the fancy script ‘One-Zero-Seven” he’s had back there since basic.

Bucky’s told Steve he wants the Brooklyn Bridge as a full back piece, but he’s not getting anything Steve doesn’t draw for him and put on him himself. He knows Steve’s been busy, so he’s trying not to get his hopes up. But he really wants this to turn out the same way as the last time Steve drew all over him.

He’s actually been hoping that maybe he can get him to do it at the next convention Steve gets invited to, because the thought of being marked like that, Steve making him even more his, out there in front of all those people, it just does things to him. He’s not sure how to ask yet, especially since Steve hasn’t really mentioned the upcoming conventions to him. Bucky knows they’re out there, the way business at the shop has picked up he knows Steve has even had to turn some appointments down. It was just about this time last year that the big one that started all this popularity Steve’s gained came around, so maybe he’ll get a chance to go this time.

He kinda wants knuckle tats, but he’s torn because they’re so prevalent. Steve sometimes gets a wild idea and grabs his hands and works out a design in pinks and greens across Bucky’s knuckles, but he doesn’t want to be another hipster with _BROOKLYN_ on his knuckles, and _STEVE_ has too many or too few letters, depending on if he wants both hands or just one. Steve has a pretty strict policy and won’t tattoo names of anyone on anyone (exceptions made at his discretion), but Bucky’s pretty sure he could convince him. After all, Clint did, with his _PJC_ in fancy letters on his hip.

He’s drifting, a little sleepy and enjoying the way the markers are tickling against his back, trailing down his spine now, the way Steve’s shifted and his cock’s semi hard against the back of Bucky’s knee where it’s gone mostly ignored all night.

He wants an arm band around his right bicep. Maybe baseball stitches like the ones Steve’s got around both elbows. He wants something on his collarbone, like Steve’s, but he’s not sure what yet. Really, he wants a ton of tattoos and any time Steve’s ready to ink him, Bucky’s ready and willing. He sometimes wishes there was more of him so Steve woul never run out of canvas to cover. He’s not going to press though. Steve’s probably tired of inking people all day, only to have to come home and do it for him as well.

Steve blows across Bucky’s back, signaling the end of that design. The soft music in the background stops, and Steve doesn’t even pause, lost in his own head and the picture he’s bringing to life on Bucky’s back.

More than any of the others, Bucky finds himself thinking of a tattoo of a ring on his left hand, to match one on Steve’s, but he hasn’t mentioned that to anyone yet. Maybe it’s all the wedding talk, with Peggy and Maria taking the plunge. It’s all that’s on anyone’s mind, really, as the big day draws closer. He’s not sure how Steve would react to that idea.

Steve shifts again, and Bucky feels Steve’s hand on his lower back, the marker coming down in soft little strokes. Bucky remembers how Steve sided with Clint on the marriage debate, questioning the point of the whole matter. Bucky doesn’t want to ruin what they’ve got, back Steve into a corner where he either has to say no and constantly ignore the elephant in the room until it drives them apart, or worse, say yes out of obligation.

What they have is good, it’s fine. Bucky knows Steve’s with him, is pretty sure Steve’s in it for the long haul, just as much as he is. Their friends know it, acknowledge them. It’s not like anything would change. It’s not like like being married would make anything any different.

Bucky hears the faint pop of the cap fitting back on the marker.

“You’re so fucking hot, Bucky,” Steve whispers.

“Now that you’ve marked me all up?” Bucky turns to look back over his shoulder.

Steve nods, rolls off of him and slithers up Bucky’s side, worming his way under Bucky’s arm to kiss him.

“What did you draw on me?” Bucky asks, gasping when Steve sucks hard across his shoulders and up his neck.

“Lotus. Testing something with gear placement in the petals. Looks good, but it’s not right, not for you. Might sell it at the con, though.”

“Yeah? That coming up soon?" Bucky asks, trying to sound casual, but Steve’s wiggling back down, pushing Bucky over onto his side, licking and sucking his way down his chest, nibbling at Bucky’s belly button.

“Mm, soon, yeah, let me suck you, come on, help me out.” Steve’s jacking him slowly through is boxers, pressing his other hand awkwardly on Bucky’s ass. “Come on, Bucky.”

Bucky gives up the idea of coherent thought for a while, guides his cock into Steve’s mouth, waits for the satisfied little hum Steve makes when Bucky takes over, fucks his mouth until he comes, then lets Steve jerk himself off over Bucky’s stomach.

Steve’s asleep before Bucky remembers he was going to ask about the convention.

* * *

 

Steve takes off his shirt, holds it up, glances at Bucky, frowns.

"What?" Bucky asks, fresh from the shower, washing off the sweat-and-beer smell of a night in the pit at the club.

"Put it on," Steve says.

"What?"

"Put it on," Steve repeats, and tosses the shirt at Bucky.

"No way, it won't fit," he laughs.

Steve sits on the bed, leans back on his elbows. "I wanna see."

So it's one of _those_ nights. Bucky had been expecting something; Steve had gotten tossed around pretty good in the pit. He wasn’t expecting it quite like this, though. "You know I'll stretch it out," Bucky says, but he's already dropped the towel.

“I know,” Steve say quietly. “I want to see.”

Bucky pulls the shirt over his head and stretches his arms through the holes. He hears a couple of the stitches pop when he settles it on his biceps, and he flexes just to watch Steve’s eyes go almost all the way black. He pulls the hem down over his belly, distorting the fabric a little as it settles above the swell of his stomach. He hears Steve’s breath catch when he moves a little and the shirt rolls up, bunching a bit at the top of his belly and under his arms.

"Good, yeah. That's - that's good," Steve says and Bucky smoothes the shirt back down at his sides.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, constricted and fairly uncomfortable, but enjoying what he can see it’s doing to Steve. He makes his way over to the bed, bends down over Steve, watches his belly hang there for a moment before he looks back at Steve’s face.

“How you want it tonight, baby? Want me on top? All this pressing into you?”

Steve licks his lips, shifts back on the bed. “Mhm.”

“Want me to bend you in half? Fast and hard?” Bucky crawls on top of him, reaches into the nightstand drawer while Steve runs his fingers around the bottom hem of his shirt where it’s pulled tight across Bucky’s back, sides, stomach.

“Yes. Yes, fast. Hard.” Steve starts to turn over, but Bucky stops him, hand on his hipbone.

“Like this,” he says. True to his word, he slicks himself quickly, bends Steve’s legs up around his elbows, thrusts into Steve carefully, but hard, fast. “Like I promised.”

Steve moans, deep in his throat, writhes a little below him. Bucky just tightens his grip on the backs of Steve’s knees, circles his hips, bottoms out while Steve whines and begs below him, nonsense sounds and half-formed words.

Steve’s short nails are digging into his shoulder, his neck exposed as Bucky pounds into him. The way his cock is rubbing against Bucky’s belly where it’s pressed between them is providing enough friction for Steve to gasp, “Close, so close, Bucky, come on, _please_.”

Bucky adjusts Steve’s skinny legs, bends forward just enough, closes his teeth on Steve’s neck softly, sucking as he loses the rhythm. He can feel Steve’s cock jerk between them, feel Steve shudder and he lets himself come.

He rolls off Steve, onto his back, panting harshly. “So good, Steve,” he murmurs between breaths.

Steve laughs a little, wheezing slightly as he rolls onto his side, presses against Bucky, wiggling around in the mess on both their stomachs. Bucky still sometimes forgets how much Steve likes wearing his come, likes it rubbed into his skin. He doesn’t ask for it often, but when it happens, he’s sure to make as big a mess out of it as possible, rubbing it in and passing his fingers over and over until long after there’s nothing left to feel.

Steve pinches at Bucky’s side, presses a half-hearted kiss into Bucky’s chest. Bucky will clean them up in a bit, but for now he’s content to just lie here.

When Steve gets up after a few minutes, Bucky can see the bruising starting behind Steve’s knees. “Sorry, babe,” he whispers, kissing Steve’s shoulder as he passes him on his way to the shower.

“I like it, though,” Steve says softly.

“Then come into the shower with me and let me show you how not sorry I am.” Bucky raises his eyebrow suggestively, then falls apart at Steve’s unimpressed face. “Come on. Save water? Efficiency? Wash my back?”

“You can stop, you can stop.” Steve laughs, steps into his space and bites at his collarbone. “You got me.”

“Yeah,” Bucky hugs him tight. “I got you.”

* * *

 

Bucky doesn't end up going with Steve to the convention in any case, so his stupid little public-claiming fantasies can stay just that: fantasy. Stark offered to pay Bucky’s way, so Steve can use him as a canvas at the con for the live events. He knows he’s still got some trauma when it comes to driving. He didn’t know he apparently can’t even get near an airplane.

Bucky’s fine while he’s packing. He’s fine when Stark’s private car picks them up, although he takes advantage of the tiny bar in the back of the car when they hit the highway. He’s fine when they pull up to the tiny regional airport where Stark houses his plane.

Bucky starts hyperventilating the minute they step into the hangar. He’s got his head between his knees when Stark offers to fly them commercial. “Maybe a bigger plane would work better?”

Bucky gasps out, “No. Not better,” and Steve shushes him and tells him to focus on his breathing. He’s rubbing his back, telling Bucky it’s going to be okay, just breathe, and telling Stark he’s not going to go, they can cancel, he’ll pay him back for the non-refundable deposits.

Bucky argues with him, backing up Stark. This is too important to Steve’s career, to his future, to let Bucky fuck it up with his issues.

“I’m not leaving you like this, Bucky,” Steve says.

“I’m fine,” Bucky starts, breathing a little more under control outside the building, staring up at the blue sky.

“You’re a fucking liar,” Steve says.

“Yeah, okay, so I’m not fine. I’m fucked up. But I’ll be fine, and you have to go to that convention. You’ve worked too hard not to.”

“But -”

“No buts, Stevie.”

“But - “

“Get on the damn plane. Go. I’ll be here. It’s only three days.”

“You think you can survive three days?” Steve asks with a weak smile.

“I think I’ll be all right.”

* * *

 

He’s not all right. Tony waits with him while they watch the plane take off, watch until it disappears, Bucky’s hands shaking and shoved in his pockets, his breathing only even through sheer force of will.

“Home, bar, or diner?” Tony asks him when they can no longer see the plane.

* * *

 

Bucky goes home and waits for Steve to call him to tell him he’s landed safely. He reassures Steve that he’s fine. He gets amazingly, stupidly, black-out drunk.

* * *

 

When he wakes up the next afternoon, when he can move and open his eyes at the same time, he takes a very long shower and orders a couple of pizzas.

He tries to text Steve after they arrive, sitting hot and steamy on the table. Maybe Steve wouldn’t mind hearing about them.

_What are you wearing?_

_Clothes_ is the lameass and fairly predictable response. Steve’s never been good at dirty talk, in person or otherwise.

 _You’re no fun_ , He sends back.

_Untrue i am the most fun._

_You are also a liar_ , Bucky sends. He settles in with one of the pizza boxes next to him, rubbing his fingers across the waistband of his boxers, but it takes about fifteen minutes for Steve to reply.

_Sorry, v busy. later?_

Bucky sets the phone down on the floor beside him and leans back in the bed. He folds his hands carefully on top of his stomach. He closes his eyes. He takes a dozen or so very deep, slow, even breaths, and then he picks up the first slice of pizza.

* * *

 

A car backfires outside and he dives for cover. Fucking August.

* * *

 

Clint and Coulson come into the diner while he’s there, picking apart his club sandwich. He waves them over and they join him.

“You all right, Bucky?” Clint asks.

‘Yeah, fine,” he replies, not really concerned with whether he’s convincing or not.

“There’s like, an entire sandwich in front of you,” Clint says.

“Clint,” Coulson admonishes.

“No, it’s okay.” Bucky gives them a weak smile.

“Steve still gone?” Coulson asks.

Bucky nods. “I can’t get on an airplane,” he blurts.

Coulson blinks, but Clint nods. “I can’t ride roller coasters.”

Coulson’s gaze is ping-ponging between the two of them, and Clint shrugs. “It’s the feeling. Like when a helo gets hit.”

“You never told me that was why,” Coulson says.

“How often do we face roller coasters?” He looks at Bucky. “How often are you going to have to face airplanes? Next time, plan a road trip. We’ll drive you. Right, boss?” Clint turns puppy-dog eyes on Coulson.

“If we can,” Coulson says.

Clint preens. “There!”

It doesn’t really make Bucky feel any better, but it’s a nice gesture, and he can see how much it means to Clint to be helpful, so he smiles and tries to finish his sandwich.

* * *

 

When Steve comes home a few hours earlier than expected, Bucky’s up on the roof, wedged into the corner with a hammer in his hands. He knows where he is, he knows who Steve is, he just can’t make himself stand up.

“Bucky?” Steve calls, crouching down a few feet in front of him.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky rasps out. There’s a crack of thunder and Steve jumps. Bucky doesn’t. “Whatcha doing home so soon?”

“Perks of a private plane. Missed you.” Steve looks up at the sky as another roll of thunder sounds. “It’s going to start raining soon, Bucky.”

“Looks that way, yeah.”

“You wanna come inside with me before that happens?”

“Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute,” Bucky says, making absolutely no attempt to move.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure that’s true, Buck,” Steve says, the first drops of rain starting to fall. “How long have you been up here?”

“Well,” Bucky starts, “is it still Sunday?” He means it as a joke, but the heartbroken look on Steve’s face stops him. “Only an hour or so, Steve, I’m fine.”

“Can you come inside then? The rain is cold.” It’s blatant manipulation, because it’s August and there isn’t a damn thing cold about the rain coming down right now, but Bucky wants to be able to do this. Steve came home for him and all he’s asking is that he comes inside from the rain.

“Yeah.” He still doesn’t get up. He wants to. He just doesn’t.

“How about … Can I come closer?”

“Yeah.”

Steve comes over to him and holds out his hand. His is steady. Bucky takes it and Steve pulls, but since Bucky isn’t helping him at all, he doesn’t actually move.

“So. You wanna maybe stay up here for a while?” Steve says.

Bucky nods, and Steve sits down in his lap, wet and slippery, and he snuggles in with his face in Bucky’s neck.

“How the fuck is your nose cold, it’s August,” Bucky grumbles.

Steve laughs and rubs his nose under Bucky’s ear and tells him about the convention.

* * *

 

Coulson finds Bucky again, a couple weeks before the wedding. They’re all at the club when Steve and Clint are over at the DJ booth, trying to explain some rare musical concept to Thor, Tony taking the opposite side of the argument simply to be contrary. Bucky’s relaxing at the table with a beer when Coulson comes over, gestures questioningly at the empty chairs.

“Mind?”

“Not at all,”  Bucky replies, leaning his chair back on two legs..

Coulson takes a drink, then spins his bottle between his palms, sliding it back and forth on the table. “It’s not that Clint doesn’t believe in marriage, you know.”

Bucky blinks. “What?”

“Marriage.” Coulson says. He looks up, sighing. “He’d probably want to if he thought of it as an option. It’s not.”

Bucky balks, and the chair slams back onto all four legs. “It’s not an option? You’ve been together for what, a decade, and it’s _not an option_?”

“No. It’s not an option for him. To him, I mean.” Coulson glances toward the DJ booth where Steve and Clint are bent over one of Tony’s ever-present tablets, and Tony is emphatically pointing at it and waving his arms.

“You know I give him an allowance? He asks me to approve his clothing choices? I tell him if he can go out, when to wake up, when to sleep. He’s already given himself to me in the most fundamental ways. I think he thinks of marriage as, I don’t know, a step backward.”

“That’s the dumbest fucking thing.”

Phil spreads his hands wide. “That’s Clint.” He smiles.

“That is Clint all over.” Bucky smiles back. “But you’d marry him? If he wanted?”

“In a second.”

Bucky looks over at Steve again. “Yeah.”

“You’ve got a lot in common.”

“You’ve said that before.”

‘It’s not any less true now than it was then. He’d never bring it up first, you know.”

“Okay.”

“Even if he wanted it.”

“Can the cryptic, Coulson, it’s not a good look on you.”

Coulson rolls his eyes. “Do you think Clint is any less devoted to me than Maria is to Peggy? Or Tony and Bruce and Pepper to each other? Just eat the fucking cake, Bucky.”

Bucky stares across the room for a minute. “What if Steve doesn’t want cake?”

“There are no guarantees, Bucky. But Steve seems pretty set on cake.”

* * *

 

The rehearsal dinner is a free-for-all. It’s only Pepper and Natasha as bridesmaids walking each other down the aisle, followed by Maria and Nick, and finally Peggy and Steve. They’re going with traditional vows, and then they’ll all move to the other side of the building for the reception. There’s not a whole lot of rehearsing that needs done, but Maria’s taking deep breaths and looking a little green the whole night, and Bucky’s caught Steve shaking out his hand and wincing every time he can get Peggy to let go of him for a few minutes.

Nick, who Bucky has previously only heard about, is flirting with Natasha. She’s reciprocating. He’s _touching_ her. Bucky’s fascinated, because he didn’t know anyone could put his arm around Natasha and not lose it. But apparently this scary-ass motherfucker can.

Clint and Coulson and Bruce are responsible for occupying Tony’s attention, far far away from Nick and Natasha, because Bucky thought for a moment they were actually going to kill him when he cackled, “What if it rains, Maria?”

Bucky’s in charge of making sure the flowers are set up. The tables are all there, he’s got the confirmation of delivery email on his phone, nothing else to do but sit around and wait for Steve.

* * *

 

The day of the wedding is cool but clear, sky a perfect fall blue as the ceremony begins. Maria’s in her suit, Peggy in her red dress, tulips at the front of the room.The wedding itself goes off without a hitch, a ton of happy tears, and it really is beautiful. And short.

It’s the pictures that are taking for-fucking-ever.

Bucky’s suit is slightly tighter than he’d intended. He’s not in any danger of busting a seam or anything, but he knows weddings. This is not his first rodeo, and god forbid anyone take the attention off the brides. He’s not entirely sure how the suit got this tight, other than the fact that it was a little snug when he bought it, and it’s coming up on winter. Everyone gains weight when it’s cold. Even Steve manages to hold on to a few more pounds in the winter.

Luckily no one is really paying any attention to him right now, and he finishes milling around the appetizer table, heading back to the table and waiting for everyone else to settle in. He grabs one of the little bite-sized whatevers from the table and turns, accidentally making eye contact with Steve.

Steve is paying an awful lot of attention to him. He waves, and Steve grins back at him, looking away while the photographer is trying to corral everyone and keep them in their poses until the pictures are done. The photographer glares at Bucky as Steve laughs, ruining the picture for the third time. This makes Peggy glare at him, and Maria laughs, which makes Pepper laugh and the Nick bellows at everyone to “fucking behave. Rogers, you can fuck your boyfriend in the bathroom in twenty minutes if you’ll just pay attention.”

That makes everyone freeze for about two seconds until they all crack up, the photographer snapping what will probably be the best picture of the night.

Bucky snags another flute of champagne and scans the other tables, looking around for Clint to step outside with him for a few minutes, so Steve can focus.

“Clint. Come with me?” Bucky asks.

“Can I, sir?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks!” Clint chirps, quick kiss to Coulson’s cheek and then he’s bouncing out of his chair and leading the way to the doors.

“You’re in a good mood,” Bucky mentions, lighting up.

“Coulson likes weddings. They get him hot.” Clint leers, and Bucky chuckles. “When’s yours going to be?”

“What?” Bucky coughs.

“Yours. You ‘n’ Steve. I figured you hadn’t said anything because of” - Clint hooks a thumb over his shoulder - “all this, but it’s gotta be soon right?”

“Um. No. We don’t. We haven’t. There’s no-”

“Why the hell not?” Clint sounds, well - he sounds offended.

“Clint,” Coulson says, sharply, from the doorway. “Go sit down.”

Clint opens his mouth as if to argue, but quickly ducks his head and walks inside.

“They’re done with the pictures,” Coulson tells him, and Bucky nods, flicks his cigarette into the planter, and follows him inside.

Steve’s at their table, and his face breaks into a grin when he sees Bucky, sliding over to kiss him before they sit down. There aren’t any planned speeches, though everyone knows Tony will pick the most inopportune time to focus all the attention on himself, and then charm the pants off everyone with an incredibly endearing toast anyway. Maria had actually tried to arrange it so that they could all spend five minutes praising him just to keep that from happening, but it was a lost cause.

“It was really nice, wasn’t it?” Steve says, still a little red-rimmed around the eyes.

“It really was.”

“I kinda get it now, a little bit,” Steve says, softly.

“Yeah?”

Steve nods.

“That’s,” Bucky swallows. “That’s good to know.”

* * *

 

The reception hall is seeing a lot of action, what with Clint and Coulson being there. They disappear during Tony’s speech and when they come back, Clint’s soft and sweet the way he is sometimes when Coulson’s taken him down recently.

And with Tony and Bruce and Pepper being there - the less said about that the better. The mirror has definitely been reattached to the bathroom wall at least once this evening, and Maria is threatening to take the security deposit out of Stark’s hide if there are any problems getting it back.

And Jane and Thor enthusiastically doing whatever dance-like gyrations they think they’re doing and Darcy catcalling from the sidelines until they switch off randomly, but with no less enthusiasm. Bucky still doesn’t know how that whole thing works out, even after living with the girls for all that time.

And Steve and Bucky are eating all the hors d’oeuvres. Steve’s completely unable to keep his hands off Bucky, flushed on champagne and feeding Bucky as many of the tiny bite-sized appetizers as he can get his hands on.

And of course, Maria and Peggy themselves being all newly wedded and stupidly gone for each other, not so much dancing as simply sharing space, caught up in each other.

There’s a reason there’s a chaise in all of the various little anterooms is all. Maria had insisted.

“I know your friends,” she says as she and Peggy sway together on the dance floor. She leans in to softly kiss her wife.  

* * *

 

After the wedding, after seeing Peggy and Maria off on their honeymoon and catching a ride home in Tony’s limo, they're getting ready for bed. Bucky’s brushing his teeth and Steve’s pulling on his pajama pants when he says, too offhand to be as meaningless as he probably wants, “Hey, Buck, do you want to get married?"

"What, now?" Bucky blurts, caught off guard and spraying toothpaste across the mirror.

'No.” Steve laughs a little and hands him a rag to wipe up the mess. “Just, you know, ever."

"Yeah. Yeah, Steve, I do." He’s cautious, unsure of how this conversation is going to do, but he can’t help but answer honestly.

"Okay,” Steve says, climbing into bed and waiting for Bucky. He rolls over to face him and presses his cold nose into Bucky’s chest. Bucky’s hand tangles in Steve’s hair, grown out more and constantly falling over Steve’s forehead.

“Okay,” Steve says again. “So. You wanna?" He wiggles in close, pressing his body against Bucky’s all the way to his toes.

Bucky smiles. "Yeah, Steve. I do."

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> you can check out my [tumblr](http://essieincinci.tumblr.com/) for other stuff in this universe, and for visuals that inspired it, [look here](http://cpbvpicturebook.tumblr.com/). 


End file.
